[RESOLVED] PCI 512, Win 2000 installation problems !!!

[Athlon1000]

Hey people, I'm new to this board and I'm also desperate for help.

This is my story:

I have a SB PCI512 soundcard and I just can't get it to work in my Win 2000 Advanced server system. I reformated my HDD yesterday and now after installing the drivers for the PCI512, everytime I boot up my system I get an error saying "devldr32.exe has generated errors and will be closed by Windows". I get this **** all the time and I can't get it right, what do I do ???

I have tried the original drivers from the installation CD, I have also tried the updated files from Soundblaster's homepage.

I uninstalled the drivers, cleared all entrys for Creative in the Registry, manually deleted the devices in the Device manager (did all this in Safe mode), rebooted to normal mode and installed the updated drivers again, rebooted and there that f****ng message was again http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum1/noncgi/frown.gif

HELP !!!

[This message has been edited by Athlon1000 (edited September 27, 2001).]

[Silverman]

Dev loader sounds like it is trying to load a DOS IRQ, check to see if an IRQ and DMA channel is being loaded in the autoexec.bat, if there is delete them, then reboot and see if the message goes away.

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DOS isn't dead it just smells funny

[Jediab]

This is an article from http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/mail151.html
The guy had the SB Live, but the same file was being affected and the symptoms sound verty much alike. I hope this helps ya. Let us know.


I noticed there was a new driver on the Creative site, and we all know that new drivers tend to fix a wide variety of evils. It seemed to install correctly, and even installed an irritating little "auto-hide" task bar at the top of the screen. But, my computer continued to exhibit this strange behavior from time to time. More research: the file date on devldr32.exe was in 1998. That definitely pre-dates Win2K. More research turned up that the file date of the devldr32.exe in the latest driver package was from 11/19/1999. That sounds pretty close to the time that MS went gold with Win2K. But, no matter how often I ran the driver install program, it would not install this new version.

I called Creative Tech support, and they were unable to help solve the problem. I called Dell, and they tried replacing the card (sent a tech to do it, too... I *like* working with Dell) after getting me to jump through a few "just to be sure" testing hoops. Neither of these things worked, and short of going to a *different* sound card, I was out of options.

The thing that *really* bugged me was I kept feeling that if only I could get the new driver to install, then perhaps it would work correctly.

I can remember reading somewhere about Windows Protection (and I've seen it at work - don't do this on a system that has anything important to you, but try going into the Winnt/system32 directory and delete a file or two. They miraculously reappear at the bottom of the directory. Pretty cool!) Except this time, I was becoming suspicious that Windows Protection was fighting installing this new driver.

So, I ran the install again, and waited for it to start asking me questions. Then I opened up Explorer and browsed to the temp directory (shortcut - type %temp% in the Address of an Explorer to take you to the directory that environment variable is set to). I located the directory the driver install had created and copied it to another spot on my hard drive. I then cancelled the install. Next, I started the device manager, browsed to the "Sound, video and game controller" and "Creative SB Live! Value" device. Right-clik on the entry, pull up the properties, then the driver tab. I selected "update driver" then browsed to where I had my copy of the new driver.

Success! This time, the driver got updated. My system has only complained about the driver not exiting once since I did this procedure.

My guess is this: Windows Protection does just what it's supposed to: protect Windows from from accidental corruption of important .dlls. The problem is, exactly how is Windows supposed to know the difference between a legitimate upgrade and a error or malicious attempt to overwrite things? The Creative package was using a Vise installer, and perhaps one that doesn't really understand Win2K's protection model. Windows didn't recognize that someone was attempting to update the drivers so it protected them.

However, by using the built-in device driver update routines, that explained to Windows as clearly as possible that I really did want to update the drivers.



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I am not clever enough to put anything of any interest in this spot

[Athlon1000]

Finally a great answer to this problem http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum1/noncgi/smile.gif
Creative acts like they never heard of this issue ( yeah right), nowhere on there site could I find a real answer to this issue.

But this was just what I was looking for, it clearly explaines what can be wrong and how to solve it. However, I have not tried this method yet, I found another way around it; just delete the freakin' DEVLDR32.EXE. It worked great for me, no more crashes or error messages. But, I heard that people with SB Live! cards could run into trouble using this method, the "Line In" sound can malfunction on those cards if the DEVLDR32.EXE file is deleted. So for people with Live! cards (and PCI 512) I will recommend them to use the method posted by you. Hell, even I will try it next time I'm going to reinstall the drivers, cause' I will NOT spend several days troubleshooting this issue again http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum1/noncgi/frown.gif

Thank you guys for helping me and many others solving this problem !!!


/Crille

(A (now) happy guy from Sweden)