I'm sure most of you are aware of the nice relationship between Creative's Sound Blaster drivers and Windows Vista - there is none. Unless you want to count a lame company with lame software writers who cannot properly write software for an OS that's been on the market for over a year now a relationship. More simply, for whatever reason Creative cannot create any decent drivers that will get their sound cards working properly on Windows Vista.

One of the biggest hurdles when I upgraded from XP to Vista was getting my Audigy 2 sound card working. At the time Creative only had shoddy beta drivers for Vista. While they did work, I lost a lot of features that their sound card was supposed to provide, included 5.1 surround sound.

The Problem

Last year I built a new PC with a new sound card - X-Fi XtremeGamer. Surprisingly the latest drivers for this card did work for Vista and all was good. But last week I decided to update to Vista SP1 and guess what? I lost my 5.1 surround sound again. Checking all my settings and connections, everything was properly setup and set to a 5.1 speaker configuration. But running any speaker test resulted in just my front two speakers doing all the work.

So I went online and found out that Creative released newer drivers that I had currently installed. So I downloaded them and tried to install them. I said 'tried' because no matter how many times I tried, I always ended up with a blue screen of death (BSOD), followed by a system restart. Granted Vista and Creative may not have been playing nice, but I'll bet money that it's mostly Creative's fault.

Moving on, I did get the new drivers installed. Turns out that after the BSOD and system reboot, the drivers were properly installed. Doing several checks on versions, I did have the latest drivers installed, but still no 5.1 surround sound - this includes listening to music and playing video games.

The Fix

I was about to give up until I decided to install Creative's Console Launcher, which was on the same web page as the driver download. Once that was installed, I suddenly had 5.1 surround sound throughout the OS and all my other applications. I didn't even have to go into the Launcher and tell it to use 5.1. It was already setup. Why this solved my issue I have no idea. But I'll just do my part and blame it on Creative's sub-par software.

Why I won't use Creative Again

Funny enough, shortly after my ordeal I read about some new hot water that Creative put themselves into. Obviously I'm not the only one have problems with Creative's drivers on Vista. Turns out there was another guy out there that created his own drivers, or improved upon Creative's drivers, getting their sound cards to work perfectly on Vista. His name was Daniel_K and he publicly released them online, which gained a lot of attention and love.

So Creative did what was in the best interest for their company and not the consumer. They pretty much told Daniel_K to stop and that he was in copyright trouble. Not wanting any legal action taken against him, Daniel_K complied. This just sent shockwaves through the tech community and people are pissed. Check out the following articles:

• Creative goes after driver modder
• Creative's fall from glory - Consumers fight back
• Site launched in protest of Creative's egregious actions
• Creative sound card customers revolt and NewEgg (?) response

I hope that this is a wake up call for Creative. I've always used their sound cards in my PCs, but unless they get their shit together, I won't be buying another Creative product.