Sound Blaster Z Worked Fine Then Suddenly No Audio

[JustSomeNumbers]

I've been using this card for the last few months, a Sound Blaster Z that worked fine up until maybe half an hour ago when it suddenly stopped working. I made no changes to the system and did not update any drivers. It just stopped producing sound when set to 5.1, which it has been this entire time and worked fine. If I switch it to headphone mode it works, if I switch it to Stereo Direct it works. If I set it to 5.1 or Stereo it does not produce any sound at all from any speakers.

Reinstalling the latest drivers did not work. Reinstalling the SBZ_CD_LD_1_00_16 drivers did not work. Changing the sound format(to 16 bit 96000Hz, 16 Bit 41000Hz, or 24 bit 96000Hz) did not work. Windows 8.1 troubleshooter said my volume was too low, but 100% volume produces no sound, and it detects no other problems(thanks, Win8.1 troubleshooter).

I'm at a loss for what else to try that might resolve this issue. Please help if you can.

 

[SBMfromLA]

What O/S are you using?

I have a Soundblaster Titanium that worked great but refused to work with Windows 10. Creative came out with a driver that allowed it to in Windows 10 and it worked for about a month then stopped working.

From my experience with Creative soundcards... their drivers are really picky and sometimes hard to fix until you know the trick. When I had problems with my soundblaster... I learned when the driver goes bad you can't a reinstall over the bad driver... it has to be fully removed... but the Add/Remove Programs feature didn't always work. The best way to fix a soundblaster corrupted driver was to go to Device Manager.. find the driver there... and right-click to UNINSTALL. After you do that, just restart and then reinstall the driver again.

 

[JustSomeNumbers]

Hey thanks for taking the time to respond. I don't know what the deal was but the only way I fixed it was to manually delete the SoundBlaster drivers from my system(they weren't being uninstalled or replaced for some reason). After removing them and reinstalling the older Sound Blaster Z drivers(before they broke 5.1 output and lost interest in updating it further) my sound works fine again.

 

[SBMfromLA]

Hey thanks for taking the time to respond. I don't know what the deal was but the only way I fixed it was to manually delete the SoundBlaster drivers from my system(they weren't being uninstalled or replaced for some reason). After removing them and reinstalling the older Sound Blaster Z drivers(before they broke 5.1 output and lost interest in updating it further) my sound works fine again.

Exactly what I said... remove the old drivers

 

[JustSomeNumbers]

Yes, but I had to dig it out of C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\, specifically cthda.sys seemed to be the problem. You know, opening up the folder and then hitting Delete to get rid of it for good. Uninstalling from Programs and Features and then uninstalling them from Device Manager didn't actually delete the driver. I reinstalled the drivers twice before doing that, which I believe I stated quite clearly in my original post. Once it was manually deleted I was able to install the drivers and my audio worked properly again.

 

[SBMfromLA]

Well, at least you got it working... that's the important thing. I've been using Creative cards for years... but I'm so tired of the driver problems I keep having... so my current card is my last Creative card. If I do another build, I'll make sure my motherboard has good sound integrated into it.