[obobski]

Ok, the IT guy at my school was throwing out a ton of stuff, so I got a lot of free hardware, including a Creative Audigy 2 PCI board, it installs and detects correctly, loads drivers, but once it starts playing back audio it pops occasionally and then the system crashes.

I'm thinking this might be A) because I used my 2 ZS Platinum's CD but B) because something is wacky with the card

anyone know where I can get a clean firmware for it that I can flash it over to (/information on how to flash it over lol, never done a sound card) to see if it fixes it

[Colourless]

Sound Cards (well creative ones) don't have 'firmware'. They are DSPs with tiny amounts of volatile memory that is programmed by the drivers. In geneal problems with Creative Labs cards can almost always be linked back to PCI bus problems. Try using the card in a different PCI slot and try to make sure that the card doesn't share IRQs with any other PCI device.

[obobski]

Then how are people able to "flash" them to different variants of the Audigy? and the PCI bus seems fine, unless the card was at an odd angle, guess i'll have to try it again

[BRiT]

Originally Posted by obobski

Then how are people able to "flash" them to different variants of the Audigy? and the PCI bus seems fine, unless the card was at an odd angle, guess i'll have to try it again

Most of that is done via vendor identification manipulation. Usually it's done via resistor modification on the card or via driver .inf file hacking. I haven't seen anyone or anywhere have instructions for flashing the "firmware" of the SB cards.

You should try loading the latest and most up-to-date drivers.

[obobski]

ok, i was jw about that
now to try it lol

edit
alright tried it in another PCI slot, firmly in, no power issues, working good speakers, etc
horrible popping grinding noises even with nothing playing

is it ready for the trash?