Does the silence indicate that I am the only one?

Nope, you aren't the only one.. it's grayed out for me & my girlfriend too

As far as I know, the 5.1 series of cards aren't fully supported or have the full driver implementation in XP (with the default XP drivers). You have to wait (and pray) until Creative decides to release XP compatible drivers (and/or LiveWare). I have SBLive XGamer (no 5.1) and seems to work ok with the default drivers.

Hey.
 
Just a quick reply, ive been using heavily, netmeeting for the last week or so, after finding it finally!
its worked fine with sound/video/mic no probs and i too have a SB5.1
 
I how did NOT use XP's drivers and rathre used my own cd i got with the 5.1
I noticed when i used XP's, i did not get all the extra functions and also that when i updated it via winupdate, it crashed the machine and messed up the registry big time.

Turns out this is a common bug. The newer XP drivers (version 3507.0.0.0 dated 8/10/2001) still exhibit this bug in NetMeeting. It supposedly only affects 5.1 users but that is unconfirmed. These new drivers do however fix quite a few of XP driver annoyances. When I set the card to use all 4 speakers in Windows (Control Panel/Sound and Audio Devices/Advanced/Speakers) all applications appear to work correctly and output to 4 speakers. New programs to work correctly include Half Life (unsure how the positioning is, all I noticed was 4 speakers playing) and AOL Instant Messenger. I'm sure there are many others, but these are just a few examples. I will have to try a Liveware 3 hack at some point, I really want to have my web cam and audio work correctly. On a side note... Web Cams are worth the $25 they cost.

I'm using original SBLive! and my friend SB PCIxxx
 
Seems like the bug affects all (or most) Creative soundcards..

OK, I've got the same prob. What do I do to rectify it? Use the drivers on the CD? Without DS, the audio on my dial-up connection gets really jittery when there's a lag. 8)