First, the scenario.New PC with Vista Home Premium. Could not get FS9 to run. Continually showed "Out of Memory" error message. PC has 4 GB's of RAM and a 512 GB Nvidia 8500GT card. OEM Creative SB X-Fi Extreme Audio sound card. After the 5th re-format/install, I gave up on Vista and installed XP PRO SP2 with all the appropriate drivers for the hardware. FS9 ran like a champ. However, the BIOS would not recognize the sound card. No entry for Plug N' Play. Windows however, does see the card in Device Manager but lists it this way: Creative Audio Device (reserved)(inactive).My questions are these. Is the BIOS programed to the OS? Because Vista was the original OS, is there a conflict with the newly installed XP in the BIOS? Just trying to find out why the BIOS won't recognize the sound card.TIAChris

Whether or not you

Yes. Disabled. Still won't recognize it and henceforth, the Creative drivers "Set Up" says that it can't recognize any supported hardware on my system, and then promptly exits set up. The drivers are correct. What is puzzling is why the BIOS does not show a Plug N' Play entry. I have removed/inserted the card several times. Also, when running under Vista, it worked perfectly! Go figure.Thx

OK you need to install the originals drivers before you insatll the updates its a creative thing.I am assumig that you have original cd.

djt01:Motherboard is an ASUS M2N68-LA. Chipset is Nvidia nForce 430.mjrhealth:The original drivers were under Vista, the OEM OS. No CD. The downloaded drivers from Creative won't install because "Set Up" in the driver program doesn't see any Creative Hardware, therefore it just closes down.What I really think I need is a BIOS update for XP but haven't been able to find it.Thx

Have you tried removing the Creative card and then resetting the BIOS?

What I would suggest at this point is first clear the CMOS. Restart the machine and get into BIOS and make sure the on-board audio is disabled. If you can find a Plug and Play O/S option make sure it is set to

I had some problems with my onboard sound as far as video capture.I have an ABIT IP35. I got an Audigy sound card. It came with a CD. The updates were prompted by Creative's CD, downloaded and installed.Installed the card, with no problems, and no change in the BIOS except for disabling the onboard card.I repeated the same process with my new XP-sp2 partition and Vista homepremium 64. All installations were flawless.Abe

I have had a similar problem before. Make sure you haven`t disabled (in device manager) anything like the soundcard`s 1394 port. Some driver installs will only recognize the hardware if all the components (midi, soundbanks, gameport etc those kind of things) are all set as default and enabled. Good luckJames