I’m still seeing a lot of Vista people still complaining that their speakers reset to 2 channel. This problem is very annoying, because it means setting speakers back to multispeaker after every restart.
The latest official Audigy drivers (2.18.0001) refuse to allow anything other than 2.1 for some people. The problem is caused by the same faulty files…
Thankfully, this is a really easy problem to fix.
For everyone having problems with “2.1 speaker only bug” in Vista.
Visit Control Panel (viewed control panel home, not classic view)
* Under Programs, select “Change Startup Programs”
* When Windows Defender pops up, scroll down to CtHelper Application (CtHelper.exe) and disable any entries regarding it. (by clicking disable button – there may be more than one CtHelper present too! Maybe disable all Creative start-up entries…
* Go to Creative Audio Console & Set your speakers to 5.1 or whatever, then restart to test it.
* Under Programs, select “Change Startup Programs”
* When Windows Defender pops up, scroll down to CtHelper Application (CtHelper.exe) and disable any entries regarding it. (by clicking disable button – there may be more than one CtHelper present too! Maybe disable all Creative start-up entries…
* Go to Creative Audio Console & Set your speakers to 5.1 or whatever, then restart to test it.
Your Center Speaker and Surround may now function with reduced volume. If this is the case, do the following:* Visit Control Panel (Classic View) and find “Sounds”
* Select “Speakers – Creative X-Fi / Audigy” and hit the “Properties” button
* Navigate to “Levels” and hit the “Balance” button
* Here you will find independant volume levels for your Creative soundcard
* Select “Speakers – Creative X-Fi / Audigy” and hit the “Properties” button
* Navigate to “Levels” and hit the “Balance” button
* Here you will find independant volume levels for your Creative soundcard
XP users wishing to fix 5.1 issues can type “msconfig” in a run command. Choose start-up tab and disable CThelper.exe there
Good Luck!
No More Goat Soup 
CtHelper resets to 2 speakers even when using original Creative’s drivers. Also terminating already running process of CtHelper.exe saved from perpetual resetting speaker configuration to 2.
Thanks for the tip! 🙂
Cheers man! i’ve been looking for a solution for a while now, now that annoyance is gone i’m on happy person. cheers again 🙂
Thanks for this trick. Works perfectly!
“Thankfully this problem is really easy to fix.”
Am I missing something? What is the fix?
Is there a link or information missing from this entry?
I’m equally confused – what is the fix? This has been giving me trouble for months!
I’ve since found some answers.
I posted on another blog entry here at nomoregoatsoup:
Basically,
Start -> Run -> msconfig
Uncheck any ‘Creative’ items on the ‘StartUp’ tab (CtHelper and CTXfiHlp for me on Vista w/ Audigy Platinum Drivers)
This will keep your speaker channels from auto-switching from 5.1 to 2.1 or similar.
Next goto Control Panel -> Sound -> Properties Button for Speakers on Playback tab -> Levels Tab -> BALANCE button
Make sure all of your speaker levels are correct.
On my machine, the AutoSwitching of Channels from Quadrophonic to Stereo set all but my FL and FR speakers to ZERO volume.
Since making this change w/ the latest (7/17/08) drivers, all of my problems seem to be behind me.
No more auto-switching and No more conflicts when using my Front Panel Headphones (RealTek Driver).
Slight admin error, sorry guys -restored page 😀
I have the same problem with only 2.1 and headset options. I dont have any CThelper.exe running anywhere though. Only one that resembles a little is ctaudsvc.exe. I tried stopping that (and any other creative) process through Windows Defender and MSCONFIG but that didnt do it for me. Im using Vista 32 and my card is X-Fi Xtreme PCI Express for notebook and im using the latest 1.03.0001 driver. Any suggestions?
Hi,
I have an Audigy 2 (E880) Sound card, am running Vista SP1. I installed the latest driver 2.18 and I am not getting surround sound on my Logitech 5.1 Speakers. Didn’t find any instructions on how to fix this. I tried several things, stopped CThelper.exe, uninstalled all sound drivers with Driver Sweeper before installing, tried installing 2.15 drivers, but I still have the same problem:
In the Audio Console, under the Speaker tab, the SPEAKER SELECTION LIST IS EMPTY. I cannot choose a speaker configuration. Am getting only 2.1 Sound.
If you know a way of making this work, let me know please.
m1ch4L
I only get the empty selection bug when installing over previous drivers without uninstalling the old ones! Sometimes driver sweeper can miss stuff -or can’t gain permission to delete stuff.
Perhaps try the really long way to clean your system. It’s worth doing, and I know for a fact it fixes this issue.
Check out this post to resolve your issue.
Hope it helps.
for those that have had the problem of the creative console resetting itself to it’s default after every reboot. It appears that in win8 microsoft to speed up boot and close down doesn’t save default positions. However it does if you can get the computer to “sleep” . try it it may just ease the level of frustration with creative support.
[…] Creative X-Fi / Audigy Speakers Resets To 2 Speaker … – May 19, 2008 · Visit Control Panel (viewed control panel home, not classic view) * Under Programs, select “Change Startup Programs” * When Windows Defender pops up …… […]
[…] Creative X-Fi / Audigy Speakers Resets To 2 Speaker … – May 19, 2008 · I have the same problem with only 2.1 and headset options. I dont have any CThelper.exe running anywhere though. Only one that resembles a little is …… […]
For lastest drivers, disable rundll32 P17RunE.dll,RunDLLEntry in startup. It is probably responsible for the detection of connector type in use (Headset, speakers 2.1, 7.1 speakers, etc.). Extracting readable text file, what stands out, you can find “SpeakerConfigRestoreDelay” and “HeadphoneJackDetectionRestore”. Disable this can solve problems with wrong detection.