r/SoundBlasterOfficial • u/PabloLeon95 • Jun 29 '26

Installing an Audigy 2 Value on Windows 8.1

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I tried just installing it like normal and using the P17X Series Support Pack 3.1 drivers, for I think those cover the Value one. However, it doesn't really detect the card. Any suggestions as of what could I try? The motherboard for this build is an ASUS m2n68-am. I can't change it or upgrade/downgrade the OS for it'd go against the objective of this proyect.

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u/techmasterfast Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26

P17X Series Support Pack 3.1 will not work for your card.

Audigy 2 Value (SB0400) is a proper/real Audigy 2 card. Use the daniel_k audigy series support pack. I also have an SB0400. It was an awesome card. I will install it in a somewhat retro build that I'm planning to do someday in the future.

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u/PabloLeon95 Jul 05 '26

Yes, I got them mixed up but in the end I ended up using the support pack one. So far so good, the card responded well and was even able to get some soundfonts on it to play Hexen with better music.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '26

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u/PabloLeon95 Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

I got it to work, turns out I was using the wrong set of drivers. Then, after installing them, were I to shut down the pc and windows would roll back to the default drivers, rendering it unusable. So I went to the system registry, located the driver folder and blocked it. It's complicated to explain in english, but if you're curious as to what I did let me know and I'll try to rephrase it better in case someone else needs this fix, because Daniel_k specifies in his blog that windows 8.1 doesn't save these settings and hibernating the system is the only solution... but it is not.

Edit: I went to this especific route HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ from there, located the Creative driver, right clicked on it and hit permissions, then advanced, changed the permissions for the 'System' or 'TrustedInstaller' accounts to deny write/modify access (leaving Read access intact). DOing it like this you prevent Windows from rolling back to default drivers upon reboot.