WIndows Updates messes Soundblaster Zx up.

I'm beginning to wonder whether MS is at war with Creative or just me.

Anybody else got a Soundblaster Z series soundcard?

If so do you have problems after Windows updates. More often than not I have to spend the better part of an hour uninstalling and re-installing the drivers.

It's never the same problem twice, this time my headphones were completely disabled. In the past the update has disabled the soundblaster and tried to feed audio to my monitor which doesn't have any audio at all.

It is creative to blame - they have published the wrong drivers to Windows Update before and I pointed it out to them and it took them months to sort it out. You're best bet is raising an official tech support query with them and be persistent. They will fob you off at the start like "oh just disable windows update" but keep on at them and eventually they feed it back to their devs.

I've sent them a support request to ask if there is any danger of a fully compatible Win10 driver package being released.

Generally, if you have a working setup, leave the drivers alone...forever.

In reply to a post by camieabz:

leave the drivers alone

I do leave them alone. It's after MS updates that they are broken.

Turn driver updates off. google for procedure under win 10. I had a problem with the latest update and nvidia drivers so rolled them back to december 2017 and turned off driver updates. I was getting spontaneous reboots because of the graphics driver.

In reply to a post by camieabz:

Generally, if you have a working setup, leave the drivers alone...forever.

I'm the opposite and always run with the latest driver/BIOS version etc. They are released for good reason - generally to fix bugs.

Or introduce new bugs.

I was feeling tetchy yesterday . Not only had the last update completely disabled my headphones but the download link on the creative web page would not respond so I couldn't get hold of the latest drivers. I tried again yesterday evening and the link was working so all is good now.

It's just so annoying when this keeps happening again and again.

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

In reply to a post by camieabz:

Generally, if you have a working setup, leave the drivers alone...forever.

I'm the opposite and always run with the latest driver/BIOS version etc. They are released for good reason - generally to fix bugs.

I agree with you regarding manufacturers� drivers, but quite how Microsoft think they can write better drivers for client kit than the makers of it has always been beyond me.

No Microsoft replacement for proprietary drivers, in any version of Windows, has ever worked properly for me. The prime example being 3-in-1 printers, where some generic driver from MS for the basic printing functions of all such HP machines replaces the originals or their HP versions. Copying is usually not affected, printing can lose some functionality, and scanning can fail completely except into Word. Device Manager will report the machine as up to date and working .