If your Sound Blaster is not detected by Windows here are a few things which you can try:
- Turn off your PC, unplug the power cord and wait 5 minutes (this will solve the problem in 90% of the cases).
- If the card is still not detected when you start your PC then continue to step 3.
- Unplug any audio cable, line-in, headphones jack from your onboard audio adapter.
- Make sure the onboard audio adapter is disabled in BIOS.
- Disable Fast Boot in BIOS.
- Plug in your Audio cable or optical connector in the Sound Blaster.
- Start the computer. If the audio adapter is still not detected then continue to step 8.
- Open the PC case (be aware not to void the warranty) and move the audio adapter to other PCI-E slot.
- Start the computer and now we hope that your audio adapter was detected.