Audigy 1 (SB0090) driver problem

Hi, Just come across this board and it seems very helpful so I'd like to pick some brains if i may!
I have a SB Audigy 1 card installed and every now and then, especially when working on audio recording, the sound gradually decreases in volume until it vanishes and doesnt work again! I have to uninstall the card and reinstall.
However, it's always a 50/50 whether it will work again! Sometimes it will sometimes it wont. I think I might have a software rather than hardware problem. The drivers don't seem to install right, i.e. the soundfont support has never worked, and the joystick port works with a MIDI interface but there are no gameport drivers showing?!
If I try to use any EAX effects, I also lose all sound output.
I tried downloading the latest Creative drivers, but it always says that it can't find an Audigy product in the computer and exits the installation, so I am unable to upgrade the drivers.
I have disabled the onboard sound, firewire port etc, everything else on the computer works fine, just the soundcard plays up. I am using Windows XP professional, could this be an issue? I.e should I buy the home edition? I bought the Professional edition thinking it would be super compatible, but I've had many software problems in the past, especially with drivers.
any advice would be welcome! When the card works it's great, but I think I am missing out and not getting everything from it that I should.
Also, the Creative ASIO drivers always fail to load, as does the soundfonts, and half the time, the effects. Why would it only do it some of the time though? I have the original CD for the drivers.
Thanks in advance, and please excuse me if a similar problem has been mentioned before, I have only had time to read some of the threads.
Thanks again!

Welcome to windrivers danny. Don't know if you saw this, but the audigy driver update needs to be installed in two steps. Take a look at the bottom of this thread http://forums.windrivers.com/showthread.php?t=64097, the links are posted. Before installing, go into safe mode and uninstall all creative software/drivers from add/remove programs and remove all associated devices in device manager.

xp pro is not the problem and downgrading to xp home will not do anything for you. The problem is creative and their lack of product support.

Thankyou for the links, I will try that now and see what happens. I didn't think it was an XP pro/home problem, I'm just running out of ideas!!
I'll try these drivers and see what happens - hopefully I'll have some joy, I'll post what happens...

Ok, I downloaded the updates - however neither of them work as they both say that an Audigy can't be detected on the system, and wont go any further because the drivers cant be detected to be updated
It definitely seems to be a driver problem, for some reason the drivers from the CD just arent installing properly. I have tried from a clean XP install, but also with no better success.
Any suggestions to that one!!!

Have you tried moving the card to a different pci slot?

Yes, I did try that, I have 5 slots available as it is the only PCI device I have in the computer. Windows sees it as a Creative Audigy Processor (WDM), and always detects it whichever slot it's in, I think it must be a software thing, maybe I have been extremely unlucky and got a dodgy driver CD? It seems ok, but I don't know. It's the only hardware I've ever had trouble with on this system.

If you search through the forum, you will see that problems with Audigy cards are extremely common, particularly w/ XP. Its not your driver cd that is dodgy, but the drivers in general. The blame goes squarely on Creative and their lack of product support.

Yes, I've found their product support to be pretty poor! I will keep looking throuh here and see if I can find a similar problem, it certainly seems to be quite common to have trouble with this type of card.
Thanks for your help!