just to update if anyone else has this problem, I reset the sampling and all that but nothing worked and I ended up doing a complete restore from a backup image which of course fixed it. I have had to resort to complete restores often lately. I am sure many never experience problems that mysteriously appear but for those that do it is best to disable auto updates, disable internet access ( because I will tell you occassionally microsoft will turn back on the auto update feature by itself and you're off to the races with some bs install) , always make both a system restore image ( with third party software if you can afford it) AND a complete disk image, doublechecked to make sure its not corrupted, before installing a new app, doing an update , or changing a potentially serious setting.

My philosophy, after many manyhours of stress and frustration, is that if it works dont fix it-- and if you can get everything running correctly and can afford it buy the best drive image software you can get and an extra drive and make multiple backups, and check your backups often for corruptuion as they have a tendency to become corrupted over time.

then when you system goes crazy, as it eventually will, you can resote the drive rather than spending a million hours searching forums and contacting support.

Also, I have a dell xps running vista 32 and a creative SB X-FI card , and its been nothing but trouble from day 1. I hate creative products, or at least those that come installed on dell machines. The new update really did make the midi sounds out of tune with no obvious way to correct the problem.

Just my 2 cents.