[Miz]

Check in Control Panel>Multimedia>Audio tab to see if the sound card is selected as the "Preferred Device" in all fields. If not, select it from the drop-down list and click OK to save any changes made.

There is spyware out there that will change the preferred device to the modem and that may be the underlying problem.

If that's not it, where did you download the new drivers? If you got them from the Windows update site, that might be the problem as well. See if you can find drivers on the manufacturer of the sound card's site and download them.

In addition, if you used a download manager when you got the drivers the first time, (or even if you didn't), it's possible the drivers got corrupted during the download. If you got them from somewhere other than the Windows update site, try downloading them again.