I am running RTM Vista along with the Audigy 2ZS. I was using only 3 speakers (FL, FR, C and Sub) at first and everything was working fine. However, this past weekend I plugged in my rear speakers to complete the 5.1 setup and surprisingly there is no sound coming from the rear speakers. When I test them from windows and click on the rear speakers to play the test sound, it comes from the front right or left (depending on what I clicked on).

When I use the onboard audio of my motherboard (P5B-Delux) all 5 channels work fine.

Could it be the drivers of my card? 8O

I am using the 5.1 Klipsch Pro media Ultra's btw.

OK, I think I might've figured out whats wrong. The Creative audio console also has settings for speaker configs and it was set to 2.1. Now, I gotta get home and verify it by re-connecting the wires from the on-board audio to the audigy card.

Yup. Its working. I changed the settings in the Creative audio console to 5.1 from 2.1 and walaaa.

I just didnt think that the creative audio console settings could override the windows speakers settings.

I am fairly certain more then Apple and Microsoft the death of Creative will be themselves and their drivers.

I am surprised you can even use your creative sound card in vista. huh. Vista is going to be a real nightmare for at least 6 months after release then it might actually start to approach user friendly. But your going to still have problems like these with drivers and everything.

well, everything seems to be working fine for me. I got Nero, Alchohal, VLC player etc etc and not a single problem.

I had a simple modern system, not the one I have currently of course. But I used vista for about a month as my main system. No games worked, there were problems with the nvidia driver for the 7900 gt that I had. Other drivers just simply weren't available. Yeah NERO and Roxio finally came on board. I couldn't backup my drive, some how vista took over my 250GB drive as well as the 80 GB, so obviously copying a drive to itself isn't a good idea so vista wouldnt allow it.

So I used it and gave it a try. I will tell you what, going back to XP never felt so good. It just works. Maybe in about a year or so vista will have everyone on board. But the first adopters in a few weeks are going to be hurting. People are going to buy this thing na dnot know what to do. Why does my software work ive been using for 4 years now?

I've been running Vista for the last 14 months... 32 bit and 64 bit. Even the early beta prior ro rc1 would (or could be persuaded to) run quite a few things that I thought would be problematic.

Drivers for some things are a bit problematic, as is SLI support. But I 'could' live with it if I had to as it stands. For me, 'as it stands' means rc2.

I was running rtm and the fit and polish work was just not there. I mean no company besides microsoft would get away with a release like this. When you look at just how many people use this os and how many third parties developers there are. It's going to be a mess no matter what. Instead of releasing an update to xp and fixing bugs that are still there. They completely rewrite it. Therefore creating almost entirely a brand new os with all new bugs, wizards and drivers. Vista is going to be years in the making and I give it 3 or 4 years before it is even close to the same level xp is. I can also guarentee that the adoption rate is 10 times slower as well.

With all the updates to xp, media player, ie7 etc. Basically the only thing missing would be direct x 10 which is another matter. Xp has it all. That is the problem when you wait 5 years to release a new os and screw everyone who uses it.

Are there improvements? Sure I like aero kinda but its nothing special, linux has 10 times the 3d effects and that was developed by people who make pennies or do work for free which is pretty sad.

If apple or linux can continue to gain market share maybe we can finally get an os that customers deserve. I mean vista touts new security features yet activations for it was hacked before it even was released to the general public. I mean could any other company release a product that has 90 percent market share and say "its a work in progress" Nope they would get anti trust sued into the ground.

do I hate microsoft? Sure I do but so does half the industry. All the profits of the industry end up in Microsoft's and Intel's pocket. Intel has finally earned it with the core 2 duo. But Microsoft has been sitting there for 5 years with their new os on the drawing board with no real threat. They have a strangle hold on the industry. If even a quarter of the money that went to microsoft for their os went to linux development it wouldn't be pretty for microsoft. The sad thing is all the money they make from their os, goes to everything else and not back into windows. it goes towards the xbox or whatever else area they lose money.

So point is microsoft doesn't deserve their success or our money. But they have the gaming market, direct x 10 was withheld from xp for a reason.

IE6 is a perfect reason why they cannt be allowed to be the only player in a market. They literally sit on the win. Forever, the only reason ie7 was made was because of firefox and it was a direct clone.

So imaigne what would happen if there was a desktop os that competed with microsoft on a 50/50 market share. I bet microsoft would be releasing 6 month updates to functionality adding new features fix performance issues. We would be on windows 12.0 not 6.1 right now. It would have features i can't even imagine. There would be no activation no integrated apps.

Sorry about the rant but this is one area I am very passionate and irritated about. I will not be buying vista. Not until every third party application, hardware vendor and games makers have come on board.