Update from last post: After rolling back drivers causing only the 2 front speakers to work and devldr32.exe gone I went and unistalled and removed my SBlive card totally.

After reinstalling the card and using MS drivers I decided to play a hunch and using the creative CD installed the following:
"Surround Mixer" (for configuring speakers),
"Diagnostics" (for troubleshooting and testing), and
"Creative Remote Center" (for across the room control of mp3's)

Only these 3 things, nothing else from the Creative CD. After a reboot, I quickly CTRL-ALT-DELETE'd and found devldr32.exe running..... first thought was crap but then I tried for the hell of it a normal shutdown and it worked...... Not sure how but it did, after that reboot I was able to use the diagnostics tool to reconfig my speakers back to 5.1

From that point i've been good to go with real shutdown's, correct speaker settings and devldr32.exe running without causing any issues.

Not sure if anybody else will have the same luck but it's worth a shot.