Apparently I'm too stupid to figure this out...even though I built the whole damn computer from the ground up. I have a Asus A7N8X-X motherboard, which has onboard sound. I noticed while playing some games my frame rate goes down when there is a lot of sound effects going on, so I decided to get a cheap sound card to free up some resources. So I bought one from newegg for like 8 bucks and it was a miserable failure. I thought it was the card and flipped out on it and tossed it the garbage and ordered a slightly more expensive Creative Sound Blaster for 20 something. But when I install it I have the same issue. Windows hangs up on the boot screen. Now I'm smart enough to know that I'm supposed to disable the onboard sound in the bios, I also disabled the onboard game controller port (because the new card has one), the midi device, and even the modem for good measure (becasue I know some modems have sound and I don't use the modem anyway). Then I went into Windows and removed anything to with sound/midi/and gaming controls though the device manager and rebooted with the new card in...and it still hangs up on that damn boot screen. It boots fine in safe mode or with out the card in so either I'm missing something in the bios or the windows drivers or both. If you have any ideas lemme know? TIA!

Do you have onboard graphics? That's what the issue sounds like.

Sound doesn't really affect performance in games. Onboard graphics take up a lot of RAM.

no...I have an nvidia 6600 256meg graphix card overclocked to god knows what.

Originally posted by micyek
no...I have an nvidia 6600 256meg graphix card overclocked to god knows what.

Dang, can you give me your system specs? Processor is AMD, right? Give your RAM and processor speeds etc, and what game you are trying to play.

Well if it hangs on regular boot-up but not in safe-mode then it is probably a driver issue. Does it only happen with the new sound card in? Try uninstalling any previous sound card drivers or do a system restore.

game hanging up on boot but w/ sound playing sounds like video card issue possibly. Goto Nvidia.com and downloaded most up to date drivers and make sure you disabled your onboard sound car in bios startup.

**SIGH**

First sound card cost you 8 bucks and the second one cost you 20 something bucks? :scratch I have a solution for you. Stop being cheap and go get yourself a real sound card. I'm not trying to be a dick or anything but it's true. When you buy cheap stuff your bound to run into problems. I went through two cheap video cards before I learned my lesson and went out and purchased a good one and never had anymore video problems.

did you go into BIOS and disable the onboard audio when you installed the new card??