Install Creative Labs Sound Blaster Drivers

Setup could not detect any Sound Blaster Audio card on your system.

Please ensure that your Sound Blaster hardware is properly installed before running the setup program.

Setup will now exit.

I’ve personally always been a big fan of Creative Labs. I’ve owned a Sound Blaster as my sound card for every single computer I’ve built for myself. Never have I had a hitch with one of them whether it be moving it from one machine to another or whatnot.

That said, you can imagine my surprise when I was unable to successfully install my Sound Blaster Live! 5.1’s drivers that I downloaded from the web. I’d run the unified pack and got the above error.

Now keep in mind that I have a RETAIL not OEM Sound Blaster Live! 5.1. It came in a pretty Creative Labs box and everything. I called tech support inquiring as to why my sound card would not install post-format only to be told that I had a hardware conflict and that was the only reason as to why it would not work. I was also informed that any OEM cards would not work with the drivers from the web. Well, since I had changed nothing in the past hour since my format, and the card was working perfectly before, I knew the conflict theory was out, but the guy persisted. LUCKILY I found the original CD while I was on the phone, installed everything perfectly, and then informed the guy. Supposedly he passed the information on. (I’m writing this over a month later, and the drivers still are not updated. What do you bet they aren’t doing anything..?)

Here’s how to force the Creative Labs downloaded sound blaster drivers to install:

Anyway, before I did the CD install, I figured out how to make the downloaded drivers work. You will need to download WinZip and then open the Sound Blaster driver Uni-Pack with it (Right click and hit Extract to …). Extract the files to a temporary directory, and then go into the device manager. Under audio devices, select the Sound Blaster (it’ll be the one called Multimedia Audio Device and have a yellow ! next to it) and open it’s properties. Click the Driver tab and then click Update Driver. Browse for the path that you extracted the Uni-Pack to, and open the AudioDriversWhateverYourOSis directory. Click OK and let it search. It should find the driver for your card and you should be good to go.

Now note that I was unable to get the mixer and all of that other loveliness installed properly using this method. It will ONLY get you the soundcard drivers on and running.