Alright, im running vista ultimate 32 bit with a soundblaster x-fi xtremegamer. What happens is my sound will freeze up and start ringing if i am already using sound from any source, and if not, it will just stop working. The only way to stop the ringing is to change audio modes in the creative audio console but the only way to get sound back at all is to restart the computer. Also, not just the sound, but any program that uses sound won't work. Windows media player won't start the music at all nor will winamp or even myspace. I've updated to the latest Vista drivers for creative, updated the bios, disabled onboard audio, nothing seems to work. What I have noticed however, is the sound will die much much sooner if I am utilizing alot of the network with several connections, such as downloading a torrent, or a large file at 900KB/s. The sound might last only 30 to 45 minutes this way whereas if i have most of the programs shut off that use the internet, it could last up to 12 hours. I thought this strange at first, but through further research found out that in vista, they combined the windows audio endpoint builder and the network manager into the same svchost whereas in previous versions of windows they had the endpoint builder combined with windows audio. Any insight into this would be helpful.

Did you run the Windows Compatability Check program ? If not then you should to see if you have incompatible hardware.

I built the system myself with putting only vista on it. the sound card is compatible with vista, it says it all over the box and the drivers are supposed to be made specifically for vista as well.