Sound Card Dilemma

Hi all,
About a month ago I installed Windows XP Pro on my home computer. I did a
clean install, fully formatting the HDD to NTFS, and started from scratch.
the computer specs are at the bottom of this post. However, when I finished
the installation, I had no audio. My soundcard was a Creative SoundBlaster
Live (CT4832) card, and was detected and installed by windows (using the
windows drivers). I then installed the Creative drivers from CD, and still
no sound. I tried downloading the updates and patches from the creative
website, but got an error, something like "no creative products could be
detected on your computer. please make sure your soundcard is correctly
installed before running this installer". I checked in the device manager,
and the card appeared to be installed correctly. Sounds would appear to play
in some programs (VLC media player, for example), while in others would hang
(windows media player). I contacted creative, and have since tried
uninstalling and re-installing straight from the CD (same error),
re-installing with drivers from the CD (no sound). I have tried several
'clean sweep' installs (removing from the registry anything related to
creative, soundblaster or onboard audio) with each installation option, with
the same result (no sound). The soundcard worked fine under Windows 98SE and
Windows ME. I have tried everything suggested by the creative labs people,
with no luck I have checked the BIOS, and onboard audio (legacy and AC97) is
disabled (the jacks aren't on the MB anyway, otherwise I would use those). I
have updated the BIOS from ASUS, and everything seems to be fine there. I
tried the card in several slots, with the same result.

After trying all this, I decided to go out and get a cheap soundcard. I got
a Creative Ectiva 5.1 soundcard (I can't find a model number on either the
card, the box or the manual/CD). When I installed this card, I got the same
problem (no sound). The card was detected by Windows, and the drivers were
correctly sourced from the CD (I did not have to specify the location). I
checked the BIOS, and onboard audio is still disabled. the card is installed
from the CD, using the drivers supplied by creative. I can't seem to find
any drivers for this card on the creative website, and the ectiva website is
down (I assume because they were bought out by creative). In device
manager, the card appears to be correctly installed (no conflicts or
errors), however under "sounds and audio devices", all the options are
greyed out, saying 'no playback devices', 'no recording devices', 'no midi
devices', even though under hardware, my card is shown and has no problems.
The Card currently has IRQ9, the same as a number of other devices (Geforce
MX440 video card, netcomm modem, some other devices).

As far as I can tell, everything was installed correctly for each soundcard,
and everything should be working. But it doesnt, the only sounds from my
computer now being the pc speaker and the bearings in my fan. I have tried
every jack on each card with speakers and 3 different sets of headphones,
all of which work on other devices (including my wifes laptop). any help is
greatly appreciated. my machine specs are below.

Processor: Intel Pentium III 866Mhz, socket 370
Motherboard: Asus CUV4X, with no onboard audio jacks
BIOS: VIA bios, ver 1.0.0.9, with VIA 4in1 Pack installed
Graphics card: Nvidia Geforce (MX440? MX400? something like that, 128MB with
SVIDEO-out)
Modem: Netcomm 56k modem
Soundcard/s: Creative Soundblaster Live! (CT4832), Creative Ectiva 5.1
Hard Disk: Seagate 20GB HDD (40-1 pin)
CD drives: BenQ 52x24x52 CDRW, Fujitsu 52x CDROM
1.44" floppy drive

OS - Windows XP Pro

Once again, thanks.

Sixftdick