Installing Creative Game Port Drivers for Windows 7

My pre-teen son’s computer still has an older Creative Labs Audigy 2 sound card with the game port controller.  The Audigy 2 is still a great sound card for the games and music that he is currently interested in.  Anyway, we recently upgraded him (along with several of the other computers in our home) to Windows 7 from Windows XP.  It was a relatively painless experience since I always do a fresh install after formatting the drives.  All my systems have a clean separate hard drive for the OS.  I decided to stick with Win7 32-bit for his computer because he does not have more than 4 GB of memory and there is greater driver compatibility with the 32-bit drivers than with the 64-bit drivers. 

Windows 7 had no trouble finding drivers for all the hardware, except . . . you guessed it, the game port controller on the Audigy.  With a little research, I discovered that Microsoft discontinued support of the game ports starting in Windows Vista.  WinXP was the last OS to provide support for this sound card.  Well, that should have been the end of it.  I could have easily ordered an inexpensive (or a higher quality) USB game controller for the PC and be done with it.  However, whether it was intellectual curiosity or a morbid nostalgic fondness for the Microsoft Sidewinder gamepad that I passed on to my son (the gamepad, not my my nostalgic fondness), I wanted to see if it was possible to still use our favorite gamepad under Win7.

Game port drivers are no longer supported by Windows

A little digging led me to a very helpful forum post on how to install Creative game ports under Windows Vista.  As the forum post states, although meant to work for Creative game ports, it will work with almost any game port from any vendor.  It uses hacked files and requires a manual install to force Windows to accept the (naturally) unsigned and unverified drivers.  By the way, I’ve run the files through the antivirus program and looked specifically into the “inf” files to ensure no viruses, trojans, or other malware.  They’re clean.  And from all the forum comments, they seem to work great under Vista.  However, after several attempts, it was clear that the instructions do not work under Win7.  As I came to realize, there is a slight difference in the way Win7 installs unverified drivers that won’t allow the method provided by the forum site to work.

Use hacked drivers to install in Windows 7 and Vista

So, after a little effort, I came up with a method to make it work in Win7.  Basically, it involves an additional step of manually installing the gamepad controller driver after installing the game port driver.  I’ve included these updated instructions along with the necessary files here.  This is based on the files and instructions in the package from Daniel Kawakami (daniel_k), the original poster on the Creative Labs forum.  I take no credit for the work of Daniel Kawakami other than to modify his instructions to allow it to work for Win7.  Since I had decided to make this available to others that may be in the same situation, I took the opportunity to update some of the files in the original package.  The original package had very old files (i.e., 2003), so I extracted the “ctgame.sys” files from the latest (2010) Audigy driver package from the Creative website.  These are now included (in lieu of the older "ctgame.sys" file) in the hacked package.  I also took the opportunity to modify the “inf” files to reflect the newer date of the files.  So when you go into “Device Manager” to look at the driver details, Windows doesn’t show that your drivers are dated “2000,” which makes it look like your drivers are from the Win9x era!  These are purely cosmetic changes (except for the updated “ctgame.sys” files), but I thought I would make it available since I was already going to post the modified instructions to get it to work under Win7.  The instructions are included with the driver package here. 

Remember, you will need to have “admin” privileges to install these drivers, and it’s recommend that you disable UAC before starting.  I always have it off, but you can certainly re-enable UAC after installation is completed, if you feel naked without your UAC.  This hack is confirmed to work with Windows 7 32-bit if the installation instructions are followed correctly.  This may also work in Windows 7 64-bit, but I haven’t tried it since none of my Win7 64-bit systems have game ports.  If you decide to try it with 64-bit Windows, please let me know if it works, and I will update the information on this blog. 

[Update 1]  Some users have reported that, while the controller and gamepads will install correctly, the gamepad may not actually work.  If that happens, the simple fix is to open the Control Panel.  Find and click on the Gameport Controller icon.  If it’s installed properly, your gamepad controller should be listed.  Select your controller and click “Properties.”  Click the “Test” tab.  Click on any button on your gamepad.  If the proper button on the “Test” lights up, your gamepad is now working correctly.  You may need to repeat this whenever the system needs to re-initiate the controller (usually after a reboot).

[Update 2] It's been confirmed that this hack will NOT work with Win7 64-bit.  Essentially, the WoW64 emulator will not work with 32-bit drivers.  The hacked drivers are all 32-bit drivers, and Win7 64 requires the 64-bit drivers.  For more information see my explanation in the comments section below.

[Update 3]  As most people know, the majority of file sharing sites such as "MegaUpload" and "Hotfiles" no longer allow access to all the files that have been previously uploaded.  Therefore, the link in the post to download the files no longer work.  If you would like a copy of the files, please provide a valid e-mail address that will allow you to accept attached files.  Gmail apparently does not allow zip files to include any type of "exe" file, so please provide something other than a Gmail address if you would like the a copy of the files.  If anyone can recommend a place to host these files so I don't have to constantly e-mail these files out, I would very much welcome any suggestion.

[Update 4 (as of January 21, 2013)]  A reader has generously offered to upload the files to a server for easy download.  Please click on the links in the post to download.  Let me know if the link is broken.  

 

[Update 5 (as of October 23, 2020)]  As you can see, I have not updated or monitored this site in years.  I cannot imagine anyone still having a game port controller, let alone trying to find drivers to use with these archaic controllers.  They were outdated when I created this post back in 2011!  Now that Win7 has reached the its End Of Life (EOL), I'm even more flabbergasted by the fact that I am still getting requests for these files every couple of months.  For the security of your systems, might I recommend you move up to Win10 or Linux?  In full disclosure, I have to admit that I was, like many people who found this blog, a true diehard Win7 user to the very end.  I only jumped onto Win10 last year, and that was only because Microsoft forced my hand by finally ending Win7 support on January 14, 2020.  I have experimented with various Linux distros, especially those that mimicked the look and feel of Win7... yes, I was still holding on to my Win7 love to the very end.  Although, some of the distros looked liked Win7, they just didn't give me all the options and control that I could customize and tailor with a Windows system.  Also, gaming was limited as well it lacked complete compatibility with the all the productivity applications I use for work.  I finally made the leap to Win10, and as annoying as some of the aspects of the OS is, I found that I could have almost as much customization and control as I did with Win7.  Certainly not as much control as Win7, but I learned to live with it.  I also have the added benefit of being able to use most, if not all, the programs that I used with Win7.  Also, the peace of mind of not running an outdated OS that was not receiving any security patches, made the decision to move to Win10 much more palatable.  

Anyway, this very long-winded updated is to simply say that the modified drivers are no longer being hosted anywhere.  Yes, I still have the files--I don't know why.  If you are one of the slightly insane people that still needs to use these drivers, please provide an email address (that will allow you to accept zip files) and I will send it to you whenever I get the chance.  If you do post, asking for the drivers, can you please explain why?!?  I kind of have to know at this point.

[Update 6 (as of November 30, 2021)]  This is just so crazy that I'm still getting random emails asking for these old driver packages.  I've finally uploaded them to 4Shared and the links should be active again.  You can download the files here.