Having trouble with Sound BlasterX AE-5 with Maximus IX Hero

[bfollowell]

I've been having trouble with my Sound BlasterX AE-5 sound card. It works great when it actually initializes. The trouble is, at cold boot, from a completely shutdown condition, it takes a minimum of four restarts for the card to properly initialize and get sound in Windows. Once I get it, everything works great and, once its up, a restart usually doesn't affect it. It's just that initial boot from being turned off.

I've tried moving the card to different slots, but it makes no difference. I moved the card to my wife's computer that has a Gigabyte motherboard, and it works just fine in her system.

I've started working with Creative technical support. At first, they thought that maybe my system was booting too fast for the card to finish initializing. I disabled Fast Boot and put the Post Boot Delay to the maximum of 10 seconds, but it doesn't help. When I had it in my wife's system, hers boots to Windows 10 desktop in about 20 seconds, and it doesn't seem to have any trouble initializing.

Someone has mentioned that I may need to disable Secure Boot and turn on Legacy mode in the CSM. I thought the Legacy Boot options were for only for helping boot from various devices that don't properly work within a UEFI environment. Am I mistaken or misinformed?

I know disabling Secure Boot and going to Legacy Mode will require me to reinstall Windows and set my system up all over again. Before I go to the trouble of that, does this sound like it could help with my issue?

Thanks.

[echo07]

Did Creative support have you try doing a clean install of the Sound Blaster connect 2 software/driver?

Did you disable on the onboard sound in the bios?

1. Go to Control Panel -- Apps and Features and remove all Creative/Sound Blaster softwares. Do not restart the computer, even if prompted so.
2. Go to Device Manager -- Audio, Video and Game Controllers and right-click on each Creative/Sound Blaster entry, then select Properties and from the Driver tab choose Uninstall/Remove. Repeat the procedure with each of them. Do not restart the computer, even if prompted so. (I also uninstalled High Definition audio from the device manager under sound)
3. Use Windows Search on your hard drive(s) to locate the Creative folder and delete it.
4. Download the latest Sound Blaster Connect 2 driver and save it in a known location. Do not launch it for the moment.

5. Disconnect the computer from the internet and restart.
6. With the internet connection still inactive, install the previously downloaded software, then restart again.
7. Are you experiencing the same issues?

If you are, please try the following troubleshooting steps for us to further assess your case.

1. Keep the internet connection disabled and repeat steps 1 to 3 of the previous procedure, then restart.
2. Play a soundtrack stored on your hard disk with Windows Media Player. Are you able to hear it?
3. Restart the computer (internet connection still disabled) and play the same soundtrack. Are you able to hear it?

If it's fixed, reconnect computer to the internet.
-----------------------------------------------

Windows 10 loves to try and install drivers on it's own. I disabled that option in windows.

Type System in Cortana search box, it should bring up (System - Control Panel)

• Click on Advanced System settings
  
• Click on hardware tab
  
• Click on Device Installation Settings
  
• Check the box for No (your device might not work as expected)
  
• Save Settings
  

You can always switch that back, if you want windows to auto install any drivers it thinks your system needs (including GPU drivers).

Since the first week of owning Creative AE-5 sound card, i been fighting sound issues after rebooting. I would have to keep switching Select Speaker Configuration from Headphones to Direct HP back to Headphones in the software setup section. Doing the clean install of the software has help make that happen less often. If you have AVAST software installed, you might want to try with it uninstalled . I noticed that software causing issues with Sound Blaster Connect 2 software and causing a game i play to minimize on it' s own for no reason.

I'm using ROG MAXIMUS IX HERO (Z270) with the latest BIOS.

[goran69]

bfollowell wrote:
I've been having trouble with my Sound BlasterX AE-5 sound card. It works great when it actually initializes. The trouble is, at cold boot, from a completely shutdown condition, it takes a minimum of four restarts for the card to properly initialize and get sound in Windows. Once I get it, everything works great and, once its up, a restart usually doesn't affect it. It's just that initial boot from being turned off.

I've tried moving the card to different slots, but it makes no difference. I moved the card to my wife's computer that has a Gigabyte motherboard, and it works just fine in her system.

I've started working with Creative technical support. At first, they thought that maybe my system was booting too fast for the card to finish initializing. I disabled Fast Boot and put the Post Boot Delay to the maximum of 10 seconds, but it doesn't help. When I had it in my wife's system, hers boots to Windows 10 desktop in about 20 seconds, and it doesn't seem to have any trouble initializing.

Someone has mentioned that I may need to disable Secure Boot and turn on Legacy mode in the CSM. I thought the Legacy Boot options were for only for helping boot from various devices that don't properly work within a UEFI environment. Am I mistaken or misinformed?

I know disabling Secure Boot and going to Legacy Mode will require me to reinstall Windows and set my system up all over again. Before I go to the trouble of that, does this sound like it could help with my issue?

Thanks.

I have the same problem with my Strix X99 board. However, the soundcard(soundblaster ae-5), init fine on boot most of the times. Every 4-5 time I boot though, I have to reboot again for the soundcard to init correctly. I notice that, when it will not init, the lights on the card go black, not even red as it is before the Connect2 software kicks in and change it to whatever I have choosed.

Let us know how the RMA goes 🙂

[scrapser]

It appears the OP never updated his results towards the end of this thread. I'm writing because I just built a new rig using the Maximus XI Hero and installed a new AE-9 yesterday. This morning I booted the computer and discovered I had no sound at all (the onboard sound has been disabled). I chose restart and checked the driver in Device Manager and it shows the Recon 3D driver installed!

This is a different board, slightly different sound card yet showing the same behavior as others are reporting. I it's been over a year since the last post on this thread. If anyone has more knowledge on this issue please share....thanks.

Editted to add: I disabled the Windows 10 auto driver install feature and restarted. The card was recognized but will continue monitoring. I also have an issue where switching between headphones and speakers locks up game or music on YouTube. I have reported all of this to Creative Labs.