Creative to DanielK: stop fixing our drivers or else!

FitzRoy · Post by **FitzRoy** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 4:21 am

So some guy messes up Creative's planned obsolescence scheme and writes custom drivers for Vista. Big mistake!

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=11297
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs ... ing&page=1

tcaudilllg2 · Post by **tcaudilllg2** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 6:29 am

Looks like Creative needs a management shakeup. That puts them on record now as a dishonest company towards the consumer. The only way to save the company is by taking heads.

snkcube · Post by **snkcube** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 7:20 am

That's just wrong. Someone trying to help out is getting attacked for it. For shame, Creative.

Johan_H · Post by **Johan_H** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 7:39 am

Good to know. I will not buy a Creative product again.

declan · Post by **declan** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 7:41 am

Johan_H wrote:I will not buy a Creative product again.

Me too
WTF is a Creative product?

Rashidi · Post by **Rashidi** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 11:03 am

what a disgraceful turn....
i use to buy an ISA sound card, back then (yes it was SB Pro2)

so the companies decided to half-hearted support vista, that thay could sell more new hardware that is Vista ready?
i don't know what else to say....

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 11:35 am

I wish this had come out a week ago. I JUST bought a Creative Zen, and would've reconsidered if I'd known they were being this shit-headed.

tcaudilllg2 · Post by **tcaudilllg2** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 11:55 am

Gil_Hamilton wrote:I wish this had come out a week ago. I JUST bought a Creative Zen, and would've reconsidered if I'd known they were being this shit-headed.

It's not too late: return it if you can.

I.S.T. · Post by **I.S.T.** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 12:13 pm

I should mention that if you want to never buy a Creative product again, avoid Realtek. Creative bought them a while ago.

tcaudilllg2 · Post by **tcaudilllg2** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 12:22 pm

By any definition the administration of the company is corrupt. I'd forgive them if they tossed out their idiot execs and started an open source driver program, but it just comes down to treating your customer right. I mean really, it's that timeless of a concept.

What's important is to let everyone around know that Creative treats its customers this way. Creative products are sold everywhere in the states, so there's a lot of work to do.... But I did hear about one thing, a suggestion by somebody that maybe Creative's execs WANT to see their company fall, because then they can leverage a buyout and make a ton of bucks on sold stock. Still, I think they could probably be investigated by the FCC for fradulent advertising....

I.S.T. · Post by **I.S.T.** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 12:32 pm

Uh... No. Creative has been around for a long time, and they're still doing well.

But then again, I'm not surprised you said something like that.

tcaudilllg2 · Post by **tcaudilllg2** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 1:11 pm

Word is (from those links) they delisted themselves from NASDAQ. Or are all of those detractors just wishfully thinking?

I think it probable that "downgrading" hardware has never been tried by a company with Creative's stature before. (at least not at the driver level, god forbid!) Something very wrong is going on at Creative.

In a few days we'll hear a public apology from Creative. Either that, or they'll make CNN's front page, because such blatently dishonest business is unusual.

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 1:24 pm

Creative has been sucky at writing drivers since they had to write WDM drivers for Win98SE/2k/XP. OpenAL was developed because they couldn't stand (let alone be capable) rewriting drivers every so often.

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 1:31 am

Aww, man... I was gonna link the Creative thread to someone, but they edited the first post.

snkcube · Post by **snkcube** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 2:23 am

Gil_Hamilton wrote:Aww, man... I was gonna link the Creative thread to someone, but they edited the first post.

They should have been more clear the first time around.

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 4:03 am

snkcube wrote:
Gil_Hamilton wrote:Aww, man... I was gonna link the Creative thread to someone, but they edited the first post.
They should have been more clear the first time around.

They should have handled the entire issue differently.

If nothing else, PMing the guy instead of starting a public thread saying basically "STOP UNCRIPPLING OUR DRIVERS, GODDAMIT!"

If they'd done this in a less public manner, it likely wouldn't have travelled very far.

corronchilejano · Post by **corronchilejano** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 4:06 am

I had a SoundBlaster pro like 5 million years ago. Creative sure has fallen since then. I thought of posting this before, but there's a whole bunch of legal issues involved which actually make this quite a bigger deal. As I understand, PR wants to push new sound cards, that's why they do not want to release new drivers.

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 4:40 am

corronchilejano wrote:I had a SoundBlaster pro like 5 million years ago. Creative sure has fallen since then. I thought of posting this before, but there's a whole bunch of legal issues involved which actually make this quite a bigger deal. As I understand, PR wants to push new sound cards, that's why they do not want to release new drivers.

Well, they ARE releasing new drivers. The drivers just don't work right(a long-running problem of Creative's), and don't enable a lot of features that the XP drivers enable.

DOLLS (J) [!] · Post by **DOLLS (J) [!]** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 4:54 am

I.S.T. wrote:Uh... No. Creative has been around for a long time, and they're still doing well.

Not quite.

corronchilejano · Post by **corronchilejano** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 4:54 am

Gil_Hamilton wrote:
corronchilejano wrote:I had a SoundBlaster pro like 5 million years ago. Creative sure has fallen since then. I thought of posting this before, but there's a whole bunch of legal issues involved which actually make this quite a bigger deal. As I understand, PR wants to push new sound cards, that's why they do not want to release new drivers.
Well, they ARE releasing new drivers. The drivers just don't work right(a long-running problem of Creative's), and don't enable a lot of features that the XP drivers enable.

Oh no, you got it all wrong. They WORK in CRIPPLING the features the older drivers did provide. I'm not making that up (we've no April Fools here).

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 5:25 am

corronchilejano wrote:
Gil_Hamilton wrote:
corronchilejano wrote:I had a SoundBlaster pro like 5 million years ago. Creative sure has fallen since then. I thought of posting this before, but there's a whole bunch of legal issues involved which actually make this quite a bigger deal. As I understand, PR wants to push new sound cards, that's why they do not want to release new drivers.
Well, they ARE releasing new drivers. The drivers just don't work right(a long-running problem of Creative's), and don't enable a lot of features that the XP drivers enable.
Oh no, you got it all wrong. They WORK in CRIPPLING the features the older drivers did provide. I'm not making that up (we've no April Fools here).

I know.
By don't work right, I'm referring to outright crash-boom and such, not disabled features.

franpa · Post by **franpa** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 5:42 am

Deathlike2 wrote:Creative has been sucky at writing drivers since they had to write WDM drivers for Win98SE/2k/XP.

Agree'd... i also noticed a massive performance drop in red alert 2/starcraft etc. on my old pentium 3 600mhz under windows 98se when switching from vxd to wdm with my creative 128 card as well as lack of DOS support.

Gil the drivers work fine. it ids just that they removed the features.

kevman · Post by **kevman** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 6:52 am

Yeah, when I had Vista on my machine, by Audigy drivers were a bit of a mess. I couldn't control ANYTHING, and I had to sift through the control panel for 10 minutes to find the mixer controls (the ones in the taskbar controlled individual application volumes, not the hardware mixers).

Come to think of it, the whole computer was a mess when it was running Vista. None of my hardware had good drivers except the NICs, which used XP drivers...

I, of course, reverted back to XP and installed the latest Audigy drivers. Now there's some sort of strange issue where the input mixer (line in and CD) output sounds all echoey until I mute and unmute something.

Honestly, I still like my Audigy, and am looking HARD at these Creative Zens. They kick iPods' ass IMO.

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 7:46 am

franpa wrote: Gil the drivers work fine. it ids just that they removed the features.

franpa, read some of the related stuff.
Aside from re-enabled features, the hacked drivers are also far more stable than the official Creative ones, which ARE known for going crash-boom with distressing regularity.

Truth Unknown · Post by **Truth Unknown** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 11:40 am

kevman wrote: I, of course, reverted back to XP and installed the latest Audigy drivers. Now there's some sort of strange issue where the input mixer (line in and CD) output sounds all echoey until I mute and unmute something.

You can fix that by going to the Audio Console and Disabling the Environment/EAX/Etc and moving the Effect Slider to 0%. Apparently the drivers don't understand the meaning of disabled so you must set the slider. Or it maybe some other thing, but you can never know with Creative Software.