Ever since I upgraded to Windows 10, I have had some serious sound problems with my X-Fi Xtreme Music. Firstly, Creative doesn't have proper Windows 10 drivers scheduled for release until October! Secondly, I installed some Windows 8.1 drivers for it, and it worked.... for a short while. I can install "bogus" drivers and get sound working temporarily after a restart. The problem is, out of nowhere, the sound will stop. I don't know if Win10 is installing other drivers over mine or what is happening. Keep in mind, I had ZERO problems with sound in Windows 7 and all was 100% well. This has only resulted after the upgrade to 10. Does anyone have an X-Fi sound card out there that can offer a word of advice to get sound working stable in Win10? This is very frustrating. :bang::bang::bang:
In the meantime I am just going to use my on board Realtek sound, because at least that works. If anyone knows of a workaround for the X-Fi cards until Creative gets their act straight, let me know!
I had problems myself with my x-fi xtrememusic and Windows 10. When I upgraded to windows 10 and installed Daniel_K's drivers, everything worked fine. I then did a clean installation of Windows 10 (because I'd been planning to so) and installed firewall and antivirus right away before actually installing sound drivers. Mistake! When I installed the Daniel_K sound drivers, I had no sound and the creative audio control panel said I had no supported hardware. I tried different drivers and messed around with it for about 2 hours uninstalling and reinstalling. I finally said **** it and reinstalled Windows 10 again. This time I unplugged the internet, so windows couldn't update anything, and I installed the daniel_k drivers first thing. Now sound is working just fine! If I want my sound settings to be saved, I still have to shut down my computer completely but at least my sound works. Also I should say that when I initially upgraded to windows 10 and installed daniel_k's drivers I too had problems, similar to yours, with losing sound and settings not saving. One thing I would recommend is completely uninstalling all creative software and drivers. Unplug from the internet, turn off 3rd party firewall and antivirus and reinstall the daniel_k package again. If the sound works, set your desired settings in the creative audio control panel and shut down (restart won't work) your computer so that they're saved. If none of this works, do what I did and perform a complete reinstallation of windows 10 with the net unplugged. Install the daniel_k package first thing and see if that resolves your problem. I know it's the last thing you probably want to do, but it worked for me. PS: I too am frustrated with Creative. They had enough time to create drivers for Windows 10 and once again they are late! EDIT: Also, if you plan to do a re-installation of windows 10, install your video card drivers before connecting to the internet. Windows 10 downloaded Nvidia drivers for me and installed them without my permission! When I restarted my PC I booted into a black screen and could only get back into windows by uninstalling the "sh!t" drivers through safe mode. I also had to disable the net so Windows wouldn't re-install the same drivers. Microsoft once again creating more problems!!
Did you disable the motherboard's on-board audio, in the BIOS, before installing any software for the Xtreme Music? You might consider swapping out the XtremeMusic for a Sound Blaster Z. Better DAC and headphone amplifier.
Have an xtreme music in another machine working with W10. Had to use DanielKs modded drivers to get it working. http://forums.creative.com/showthread.php?t=720562
I found the answer. I had a lot of problems when I upgraded to windows 10 with XtremeMusic, never before! The crazy thing is, sometimes the card is automatically recognized again and it works for a few days sometimes weeks. But suddenly when booting PC starts up slowly (weird bootup) and I have the same question mark again in device manager. No luck getting get back on sometimes after a reboot or shutdown the card becomes active again but this time I was rebooting like 10x times and still no sound. This is a great card btw with 0 latency on game mode, good for recording purposes. The card is not broken it is just a software problem so it's a shame to buy a new card because of just windows10. sleepless nights thinking when I suddenly read somewhere on another forum that the current released versions of the creative driver for windows10 where having problems. So I tried installing the windows 8.1 driver with version SBXF_PCDRV_L11_2_30_0004. This worked perfectly for a few weeks now without any problems!
BTW I also tried everything anyone ever suggested on different forums about fixing this years ago, but just use a old driver version.
Have an xtreme music in another PC and working very well with these drivers. http://danielkawakami.blogspot.com/2017/01/sb-x-fi-series-support-pack-40.html
