I installed an audio card and now my PC won’t boot. How do I get it to work?
First, try physically removing the card from the system. This will allow your PC to boot as normal.
Reinstall it to another PCI slot or two to see if this solves the problem. If not, the driver probably failed to install properly and has misconfigured the card to cause a conflict. To remove the card, you can try this with the card in and with the card out of the system, whichever works.
When your computer starts to boot into Windows (just before the booting Windows screen comes up), hold the F8 key. This will take you to the startup menu. Select Safe Mode with the cursor keys and hit enter.
This will boot into safe mode, where no major drivers are loaded. Most of the hardware in the computer is disabled in this mode, and your screen will be at 640×480 at 16 colors. It will look a bit ugly, but this is normal. Go into your device manager (right-click My Computer, go to Prooperties, Device Manager) and go into your Sound, Video, and Game controllers. Verify that there are not two or more identical items listed (if so, remove them all) and find your audio card driver which caused the problem. Remove it and reboot.
Simply allow the computer to reload the driver once more. If this still fails, you should check for an updated driver on the manufacturer’s website or call Sweetwater Tech Support.
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