[WriteLog] Soundcard worse after upgrade to XP

[Bob McCormick W1QA]

> I just wanted to follow up with the progress (and solution) of
> my soundcard problems.  I just want to be clear that I never
> thought it was a Writelog problem, but rather a Win XP and/or
> driver issue.  Turns out, that was completely correct.  Long
> story short, it was the driver, but getting the correct driver
> was extremely difficult.  I tried downloading several drivers
> for my PCI 128 card from Creative labs, all that I tried had
> the same problems.
> 
> The fix was that K4JA sent me a spare card of his.  He thought
> it was a Soundblaster 16 PCI, but turns out it's the exact same
> card as I'm using, a PCI 128, model CT4750.  (And it should be
> the same, as I recommended this model to him years ago.)  So,
> I took out my soundcard and installed his.  Even though they
> were the exact same model, WinXP installed new drivers.  After
> that, it works perfectly, scoring a perfect 7f and everything
> working like before.  Just to prove that my old soundcard wasn't
> partially blown up, I installed my old card again, but WinXP
> wanted to use the just drivers that were installed with it before.
> It took a lot of coaxing, but I convinced WinXP to use the driver
> that it installed when I installed the new card.  Whammo.  The
> old card works with the "correct" drivers.
(sorry for the long quote)

I've seen this kind of problem before ... 
and with Creative stuff as well.

Often a manufacturer will have different versions of the same
product ... silk screen on the board may say it's the same thing,
but there can be subtle differences.

In the case of PCI devices ... each has an ID that is provided
to the operating system - which is used to determine things 
like which driver and sometimes even what resources.

Its likely although the cards appeared to be the same ...
there may have been a difference in the firmware and/or
the reported ID.  (If you're real creative <sic> you 
could dig through the registry to see what each device
responded with.)

Sometimes you can get firmware upgrades for cards as well ...
see if that specific one has any updates.  But be careful of
attempting to update an OEM version of a card with code that
comes directly from the manufacturer.  Often the difference
is subtle; just a different suffix or one or two letters 
different in the serial number.  But that may be 'enuf that
the wrong firmware update will render the card useless.

HTH
Bob W1QA