Note: This is a repost of the same article, which got deleted when my website was hacked.

I just spent over two hours figuring out how to get my microphone to work under windows vista 32bits with my new Soundblaster Audigy SE so I’m writing this blog post in the hopes that it will help someone in my situation.

I started by letting vista install the driver by downloading it from the windows update website but that proved to be a big mistake. The sound actually worked great but my microphone input was way too low to be usable on ventrilo. What you usually do in that case is activate mic boost but there was no +20db check box in my sound control panel and there was absolutely no way to increase the volume of my microphone.

What I tried next is downloading official drivers from the creative website. The file is 60MB and took a while to download but since it was gonna fix all my problems it was worth it. Guess what: Installer doesn’t work; it just tells me that there is already a more recent version of the driver installed. So I then proceeded to uninstall the driver through the Windows Device Manager and restart the installer. This time it tells me no supported hardware is found…

This is where I was only inches away from just taking the card out of my PC and return it to the store where I bought it. But there was one last hope, the files extracted by the installer could provide me with a way to install a working driver. I searched for those files, found the driver and installed it et voila, suddenly there is a +20db mic boost check-box and everything works fine.

So here is how I got my sound card to work:

(I give no guarantee that this will work for you and it might even go wrong so save any open documents)

1. download driver from http://us.creative.com/support/downloads/

2. double click SB24_VTDRV_LB_1_04_0077.exe and let it extract the setup files.

3. wait until installer window is shown, once you see a window where you are asked to chose the setup language go to step 4 DON’T CLOSE THE INSTALLER WINDOW.

4. use “windows key” + R to bring up the run dialog, type %WINDIR%\Temp and hit enter.

5. look for a folder called CRF000, the modified date of that folder should be only minutes from your current system time.

6. open the CRF000 folder and inside open the Drivers folder, inside that folder is file called setup.exe that will happily install the official creative diver.

7. when asked if you want to replace your existing drivers say yes obviously

8. Back on the original installer window, click close to cancel the installation because you are done installing already.

Enjoy!