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Windows 2000 driver problem

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osuman

Technical User
Nov 22, 2000
281
US
When I initially installed Windows 2000 on my computer it found all the correct drivers and the sound worked without me installing anything. I have a Sounblaster 16PCI card. I left it like this for about a week without any problems. Then, I thought I would install what was on the soundcard disk so that I would have the software for the card as well. However, it changed the drivers for the card and it hasn't worked since. When the wrong drivers are installed Windows won't boot in normal mode. Therefore, I have to go to safe mode and disable one. I have searched everywhere for the proper driver for it but I just don't think they are out yet. Since it worked fine before I thought I would reinstall Windows without formatting first so that I wouldn't have to reinstall all my programs again. However, after reinstalling, the bad drivers remained and Windows still wouldn't boot properly. Is there some way I can get rid of all the new drivers and just use the ones it sets up during install without formatting and installing all over again? Thanks in advance for any help.
 
Instead of deleting them, put the sound drivers(SB??.drv) in another directory and keep them in case you need to put them back in. Having said that here is how you can find your sound drivers and delete them so it asks for the Windows 2000 disk again to install the original 2000 sound files.

You can use My Computer or Windows Explorer to find these files.

Make sure your view is set to "show all files and types"

My Computer
C:
Windows
System
Arrange the icons by TYPE (right click, arrange icons,type)

Look for any reference to SB(Sound Blaster).drv files and move them to a directory where you can copy them back if it doesn't work. Oh and also remove all sound references from device manager.

Reboot! It should find the sound card again and ask you for the Windows 2000 disk.

You could even try to copy back one at a time and see which one the culprit is. However, you would have to reboot each time for each driver to take affect.

Hope this helps!

Lori ggebhart@clover.net
I hope I never get too old or arrogant to learn something new!
 
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