Sound Blaster

[Risen]

Installed this card yesterday, was most impressed at first, was an upgrade from an Audigy 4 Pro.

I had uninstalled all old Creative Drivers prior to the new cards installation, used the CD that came with the card for the initial install. Decided to give Call Of Duty two a try, played it for about 35 mins then it suddenly crashed to the desktop, the error message that came up mention something about my Graphics drivers not being the correct ones for my OS ( XP Home SP2 ) this was not the case as I was using Forceware v81.94 at the time. System was forced into 640 X 480 4 Bit colour mode. First thing I did was reboot, thought it was maybe a conflict with the Nvidia Drivers and CoD2.

Tried to reboot my system but when the system loaded past the animated Windows Loading Screen, the Monitor screen went Black but sound was still working and the normal loading into Windows Music played, I just couldn't see anything.

I had to boot into Windows Safe mode remove the Nvidia Drivers, reboot and install a fresh set of Drivers. This worked and all appeared fine. I then decided to check what exactly had caused the crash using Right Click My Computer/Manage.

Under Manage/Event Viewer/System the following error was logged at the time of the crash.

"The PfModNT service failed to start due to the following error:
The system cannot find the file specified."

I did a google search for this and discovered it was a sys file for the Creative Drivers. This is what caused the problem.The file is present and in the correct location.

I then decided it may be a bug and I should use Auto Update to update the X-Fi drivers.

I am now repeatedly getting errors and crashes due to this file PfModNT, tried to run Aquamark and got a black screen, checked the event viewer again and this Error was again present at the time of the crash.

I have since removed all traces of both Nvidia Drivers and Creative Drivers and installed both sets of Drivers again fresh. I am still encountering random crashes due to this particular file.

My System was running perfectly before this card was installed yesterday, and will be sent back promptly if there seems to be no known issue or fix for this issue.

My system is as follows :

Asus A8N SLI M/board BIOS Rev 1013, Nforce4 SLI Chipset Ver 6.65
Tagan 480 Watt PSU
AMD Athlon64 3500+
1 Gig Corsair 2x512MB 184DIMM PC3200 NP CL2
2 X XfX Geforce 6600GT PCI-E Graphics SLI
160 GB SATA HD
NEC Dual Layer DvD Burner
Creative X-Fi Fatality FPS

If anyone else has had any problems in reagrd with this file or this card I would greatly appreciate any input.

Thanks.

Message Edited by Risen on 11-25-2005 03:06 AM

[Risen]

Really looking for some input on this if at all possible, otherwise the card will be going back to the shop.

Thanks.

[mikelebron]

http://www.tech-forums.net/computer/topic/14960.html

Did you read this?

Honestly... Looks like the XFi issues will not be solved anytime soon.. I would recommend that you RMA first.. If not luck return card.  But you may have already been past the time for a return and have to deal with Creative directly.

Good luck

[Risen]

Yeah I had searched for anything in relation to that particular filename, I have disabled that file for the time being to see if I get any crashes/problems.

Thanks very much for the reply.

[MrMoe-X-]

Well, just so you know,it is not unique to your sound card.  I had that problem as well, somehow managed to make it disappear for a few months, then I had to reinstall my Soundblaster drivers (for the Audigy 2ZS) after purchasing a new hard drive, and now its back.

AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Message Edited by MrMoe-X- on 01-06-2006 03:57 PM

[jutapa]

Hi

If you can't find the pfmodnt.sys from system32\driver -folder then just copy the pfmodnt.sys from installation CD/driverupdate package \wdm\win2k_XP -folder to the system32\Drivers -folder.

jutapa

[MrMoe-X-]

Its not that I can't find the file, it is there in the folder you specified system32\drivers, it is just that I/we get an error in the system event viewer stating the PfModNT service failed to start (see below)

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7000
Date:  1/9/2006
Time:  9:37:53 AM
User:  N/A
Computer: ULTIMATEX3
Description:
The PfModNT service failed to start due to the following error:
The system cannot find the file specified.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

******Edit******  Try setting PFDetNT in the device manager (non plug and play, view hidden devices) to 'Demand' instead of 'Automatic'.  Restart.  It got rid of the error message in event viewer. 

Message Edited by MrMoe-X- on 01-10-2006 12:27 AM

Message Edited by MrMoe-X- on 01-10-2006 01:13 AM