Vista x64/Creative X-Fi/Ram = Crackle/Popping Issue...

[NpGreg04]

Windows Vista Community:

I don't know if you can help me or not but I'll ask anyways.

This is what I have:

Operating System: Windows Vista x64 Home Premium
Memory: Corsair 4 x 1024 Duel Channel PC-3200 DDR
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Extreme Music
MotherBoard: Asus A8N-SLI (Bios 1014)

When I have 2 GB (2 x 1024 Duel Channel PC-3200 DDR), everything works
perfectly (Sound-wize). However, when I add an extra 2GB (4GB in total), I
get the crackle/popping issue.

The strange this is when I use onboard sound, I don't get any
crackle/popping issues. I would prefer to use my Creative X-Fi over onboard.

Also when I go into my bios and disable S/W Dram over 4G Remapping and
disable H/W Dram over 4G Remapping, the sound problem is fixed but Windows
only recognizes 3GB of ram instead of the 4GB. And since I paid for 4 sticks,
I rather use all 4GB.

I am using the same type of ram (4 x CMX1024-3200C2PT). I am not
overclocking anything.

A lot of other people are having similar problems to me:

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&message.id=74182&view=by_date_ascending&page=1]http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/bo...ding&page=1

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&message.id=46846&view=by_date_ascending&page=1]http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/bo...ding&page=1

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&message.id=88212&view=by_date_ascending&page=1]http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/bo...ding&page=1

I contacted Creative and I basically got no answer. Does anyone have any
suggestions on how I can fix this problem?

[Aaron Kelley]

That's an nForce4 board, right?

I have a MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI (an nForce4 board), running Vista x64
with 4 GB of RAM and an onboard SoundBlaster Live! 24-bit. I had the most
annoying crackly pop that would occur while the sound was going which may be
what you are describing.

I've had a similar problem before on XP x64 which turned out to be related
to the drivers I was using for a PCI parallel ATA card I had installed
(Promise Ultra133 TX2, I believe). I ended up swapping the card for a
different one and the problem went away.

Anyway, in my Vista case here, I thought it might be another bizarre disk
driver interference issue. I installed the *Windows XP* nForce4 drivers,
which installed new drivers for the nForce4 Serial ATA controller. The
problem then went away immediately. (I emphasize the Windows XP drivers
because the new Vista ones did not update the serial ATA controller driver
on my system.) This was only after trying many, many things, and it was
seriously the last thing I could think of to do before I switched to a
different sound card.

Anyway, that might help you. I had 4 GB of RAM installed and recognized the
whole time, so I do not know if removing some RAM would have fixed it, which
seems to be something you are on to.

- Aaron

"NpGreg04" <NpGr...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
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