Solved Sound Blaster X-Fi Driver

On Friday 10/26 I upgraded to Windows 8 Pro and found I still had the SB driver problem for the X-Fi which is not supported by Creative anymore since my system is now over 4 years old. I'm not sure exactly when this original X-Fi card came out. I tried different Creative drivers as I had in the Customer Preview release and couldn't get it to work without rolling back and upgrading the a newer driver with two reboots.

But on Friday I removed the SB drivers and Win 8 added in the High Definition Audio Device driver that was apparently created on 7/25/2012. After doing several tests with many reboots it works every time and on my system sounds real good. I have used this over the whole weekend using it both days all day with no problems. I can't tell the difference between the original SB driver and this new Win 8 driver. I'm now a happy camper.

You don't get all the additional bells and whistles that the Creative drivers add. But a working sound device as opposed to one that you have to fiddle with to make work is a plus for sure.