my main workstation’s “soundblaster live! 5.1 digital” sound card seems to have stopped working a couple of days ago (don’t know why). the “funny” thing about it: whereas linux simply “disables” the sound device, windows (xp prof) “disables” the device but nevertheless freezes after about 5 minutes from boot-up (that’s a reproducible behaviour). there isn’t even a bsod, just “ice age” forever. my wild guess: could be an uncaught kernel counter overflow or sth similar. however, it might just as well be an unrelated problem of course (though i hope it is related in fact). hardware failures are keeping me pretty busy lately.. let’s see what happens if i remove/replace the sound card..
[update: after removing the sound card, windows stability probs disappeared. now i’ve taken a close look at the card and as i couldn’t find any evidence of a short-circuit (braised conducting paths are pretty easy to detect), i’ve reinstalled it. believe it or not: *drum-roll* the card is recognized again and all the woes have gone :) might just have been a loose connection..]