Realtek AC97 sounds disappear randomly

[patndoris]

I am using XP sp2
Realtex AC97 Audio for Via (R) integrated sound card (drivers updated from the Realtek site recently)
No firewall running on the laptop (covered by the router)
McAfee Antivirus

For several months now the sound will simply completely disappear from everything. A reboot fixes it every time. It may run for 5 mins and disappear again....or 5 weeks. Thus making it hard to tell if the problem is fixed, but so far, it's not.

I can't find anything in the system or application logs to give me a clue what happens. It does not happen with the same programs running, but seems to just occur randomly regardless of what I'm doing. Sometimes it happens when the laptop is simply sitting idle. My audio device says operating properly with no conflicts. I've compared to another person using the same sound card and we're virtually identical in our settings. I've found no way to restore the sound without a reboot.

Any suggestions would be most welcome as this is getting to be frustrating. I simply can't find the root of the problem to know what to fix since it seems to happen randomly.

Thanks
D

[pip22]

You may find that the integrated sound driver provided by the motherboard manafucturer rather than the sound-chip manufacturer. Often the mobo or chipset manufacturer fit their own customised versions of graphics/sound chips, so only their own customised drivers will work properly in such cases.

Download Belarc Advisor, install it, run it, and post the system-info it produces so we can identify the mobo: http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html