In the process of getting my sound card to work (it now works, don't anyone
continue telling me other things to do about that problem), I realized that
my sound card is using some of its own drivers and some of the Windows sound
drivers that people were trying to get me to remove, that I would not remove
without someone telling me what they were. A utility someone suggested to
help me diagnose my sound card programs clearly shows that my sound card is
making extensive use of the WDM audio components. I wouldn't remove drivers
before learning what they are, and noone ever told me what they are.
People were too busy looking at my question what are these drivers, and
telling me to read my sound card manual and plug my speakers into the sound
card, to answer the actual question that I asked.

Confusion about these windows sound drivers appears to be massive. People
who follow instructiions to remove all sound drivers but those pertaining to
their sound card necessarly remove the Windows sound drivers. On teh web
and talking to the IP person at work, I found alot of people who have never
gotten their sound cards to work, people who repeatedly uninstall and
reinstall windows and the windows version 2 package - whatever that's
supposed to do for your sound drivers - with no notion of what it is they
are actually doing. I ahd people telling me to update my windows sound
drivers and noone ever told me what one was OR how you update them. And
how is anyone supposed to know which drivers under multimedia to leave them
alone if noone ever tells us what a Windows sound driver is and what it
does? There aren't comprehensible discussions about these drivers
anywhere. Certainly not in the three paragraph instructions that Creative
provided with my sound card.

They are discussed in this article.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...eef24f.xml.asp

Can someone please explain to me properly how they interact with my sound
card drivers?

Explain in detail in plain English, please. If the above article is
supposed to explain it, it is Greek to me. For example, how the ___ would
I know what a kernel is supposed to be? Let's leave that kind of language
out of the explanation.

People without this kind of technical expertise need to understand what the
windows sound drivers are, what they do, how they interact with sound card
drivers, and how to both reinstall and update them.

--
Yours,
Dora Smith
Austin, TX
tiggernut24******.com