I purchased a Stereo-Link 1200 USB DAC (Digital-to-analog converter) to improve my digital music from my computer a couple of years ago, and using Windows XP Home Premium, I never had a problem with this operating system recognizing the USB DAC unit as my default audio source whenever I turned on or rebooted my computer.
Since November, 2009, when I purchased a new Dell Studio 8000 computer with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit pre-installed, I have had nothing but problems with this OS not recognizing the USB DAC unit. There are no drivers that the manufacture has created, since it was designed to use the native Windows OS drivers in order to function.
The problem with the Windows 7 OS is that the USB audio drivers pre-installed for the OS use a DRM (Digital Rights Management) code wherein if the hardware (my USB DAC) is not a Microsoft approved or compatitble type, the native USB audio drivers will not be able to recognize the unit. The only way that I can get the Windows 7 OS to recognize my USB DAC unit, and thus get it to function, is the right-click on the USB audio device that shows in the device manager area, and "enable" and "disable" the USB Audio Device showing in the properties screen of the Device Manager several times until the "error triangle" disappears next to the device, wherein suddenly the OS recognizes my Stereo-Link USB DAC, and allows the Windows native audio drivers to control my device, and it finally will work.
This is an extremely tedious and frustrating process just to get my hardware to work with Windows 7. Is there any other way that I can get Windows 7 to recognize and thus "use" my device in a normal manner, without having to enable and disable the device several times to get it to work?
Thanks for any assistance that anyone can lend to me.
Lee Michael Malin
SNIP