I'm using an EVGA P55 mobo, and the onboard sound chip in Win 7. Every so often, while I'm in a game (any game) my sound dies. Now when I say my sound dies, I mean system wide. Every program I've tried will be silent. This can only be fixed by a reboot. The strange part is, while trying to figure out what was going on, I turned on microphone listening, so I could hear what i said into my mic. Surprisingly enough, I indeed heard my voice coming from my headphones, despite the fact that i didn't hear the music WMP was playing (on full volume).
When this problem occurs, Windows seems to make no notice of it. There is nothing in the Event Log, nothing has changed in Device Manager, and the sound mixer displays programs as still producing sound. I have updated the drivers to several different versions, and am now at my wits end.