That of course didn't work as after modifying the INF file, the Digital Certificate was now broken and Windows sent me packing again but this time I was prepared! I quickly rebooted to Advanced Startup Options and used F7 (or only 7) for Disable Driver Digital Certificate Enforcement (or whatever it was exactly). Confidant in my skills (or lack of such) I copied all the relevant lines from the SBZ INF with the hardware IDs describing the Sound Blaster Audio Controller and the Sound Blaster Z Audio Device to the SBX AE5 INF and tried installing it again. I opened the INF from the SBX AE5 driver and the INF from the SBZ driver and oh miracle! Those had almost identical structure sans the hardware IDs and some additional things pertaining to what hardware is supported by the driver. what if I can use those newer (supposedly made for Windows 10) drivers on the SBZ? It appears that both the SBZ series and the newer SBX AE5 are using the SoundCore3D Audio processing unit (or at least very similar versions of it).Īt first I tried directly installing the driver on top of what I already had but Windows stated that there is no compatible driver in the folder and sent be packing.Īfter mentioning some mothers.

What caught my eye were the driver versions: for SBZ the ones they have are version 6.0.102.xx and 6.0.103.xx while the a lot newer drivers for the Sound BlasterX AE5 (the fancy one with the RGB) the latest version is 6.0.105.17. Two days ago while reading other posts and articles for that same issue, I clicked on a link that sent me to Microsoft's web site (Microsoft Update Catalog or something like it) there I saw all the Creative Sound Blaster drivers that were ever released on Windows Update. At least they acknowledged that there is such an issue with some specific hardware configurations. Clean reinstall of Windows, going back to the BIOS I had before, tried all available drivers and registry patches, HPET Enable/disable, I even contacted Creative's technical support, but all I was able to get from them for more than 10 days was several different versions of that same registry patch (just different values in the keys). Somehow back then I was able to fix the issue and I had no issues with is until about 3 weeks ago when I got the 1903 Windows 10 update and also I updated my BIOS to the latest one.

Aaaand the issues started.īrand new platform (back then) there were BIOS issues, Driver issues, compatibility issues and of course the SBZ Dolby Digital Live issue.

The system in question is a Threadripper 1950x on an ASROCK X399 Taichi, 32GB of DDR4 3200 RAM and a 1080ti.Īll of this was put to work by everybody's 'favorite' OS Windows 10. So here is a little story with a happy (for now) ending.Īn year or so ago I finished my newest PC and the Sound Blaster Z was a part of it.

Sound blaster z microphone not working