Member Avatar for Inlovewithnight

I have a Dell Desktop running Vista. My son installed Sound Blaster Live sound card recently. I didn't care much for the onboard Realtek. My sound plays fine, however, now my recording software program will not record anything. Worked fine before. I even tried a different recording program and that will not work either. Realtek was disabled. Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you.

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Short diagnosis tied to earlier replies: with two audio adapters present the capture path can get silently routed or hidden, so the program never sees a live input. Because reports Realtek is not visible and the SoundBlaster installer aborts, focus first on making Windows show any hidden/disabled devices and then on getting the correct driver/control panel installed.

Open the Recording Devices dialog (speaker icon -> Recording devices). In that window right-click the blank area and enable both "Show Disabled Devices" and "Show Disconnected Devices". If Realtek appears, right-click -> Enable, open Properties -> Levels and make sure the input is not muted and gain is up. In Properties -> Advanced set the Default Format to a common sample rate (44.1 or 48 kHz) and temporarily disable any "exclusive mode" options so other apps can access the device. Also confirm the capture input selected in the Sound Blaster control panel (Mic vs Line In) matches the physical jack in use.

If Realtek does not appear at all, follow ’s Device Manager line: check Device Manager under "Sound, video and game controllers" for Realtek, Creative, or "Unknown device" entries and any yellow warnings. If the onboard device is disabled in BIOS it will not show up in Windows, so verify onboard audio is enabled in BIOS/UEFI before reinstalling drivers. If drivers are corrupted or the Creative installer keeps aborting, uninstall audio devices from Device Manager, reboot, then install the vendor-provided, Vista-compatible drivers (run installers as Administrator or in compatibility mode if needed).

Quick tests and cautions: use a simple recorder (Windows Sound Recorder or Audacity) and explicitly pick the input device; try "Listen to this device" from Recording Properties to verify signal flow. Keep a system restore point and driver backups before uninstalling or changing BIOS settings. If the card still misbehaves, test the SoundBlaster in another PC to isolate hardware failure.

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Member Avatar for BigPaw

Because you have at least two audio devices installed it may be that Windows is treating the newer device as the Default, while your software has been configured to use previous ports.

Right-click the Volume Control at the bottom right of your desktop. (near the clock) > Select "Recording devices" > Set the Realtek device as Default.

Alternatively, instead of changing the system default you could locate the settings in your Recording Program and change the device your program uses to the SoundBlaster card.

Member Avatar for Inlovewithnight

Thank you for getting back to me. When I right clicked on the Volume Control at bottom of my desktop and selected "recording devices" the following came up in this photo. Realtek is not listed. I also changed the settings in my recording program to match this photo and I still cannot record. I did try to run the Sound Blaster software again, however it stops right after the beginning of it and will not continue on.

[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v484/Rfk112025/Image3_zpsda378a79.jpg[/IMG]
Member Avatar for stormal1

Go to the Realtek website and download the latest driver package for your onboard sound card. After the installation you should be able to configure it properly.

Edited by stormal1 because: typo
Member Avatar for BigPaw

Sorry for taking so long to reply again.

Could you look in your device manager and check that your Realtek device is enabled?

Start > Right click 'Computer' and choose 'Manage' > Device Manager

In the middle window there will be a list of devices, and near the bottom there will be "Sound, Video and Game Controllers". Click on the little triangle and you should see, among whatever else is there, references to your sound card(s). What do you see?

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