Audio Mixer Device problem

[DarkBlade325]

Ive been getting this problem alot recently but now it's starting to get on my tits for its sheer annoyance factor. I can't remember when this started happening but I know it was a couple of months ago.

I'm a huge PC gamer as some of you might know, and this is a very weird audio problem that Ive never seen before. Basically what will happen is that my computer's audio will work fine for a while, but after I shut off a game or any other program that uses sound, there tends to be a random chance of my Audio Mixers shutting off by themselves. Not only that, but for whatever reason, sound only stops for programs that are opened AFTER the problem has occurred. For example, I usually keep my browser open alot on my computer- even when I'm in a game. I usually play in windowed alot and if I get bored I just browse around the web you know. Now, lets say I have my browser opened. I just shut off a game and this problem happens. If I attempt to open any other game or the game I just played, no audio will be in the game. The same happens for Windows Media Player. Firefox, however, still has audio for Youtube videos, flash, ect as long as it wasn't closed after the audio problem happened.

I did some Google searches all telling me to go to Run and use the services.msc command to do some stuff- I won't go into much detail because it's kind of hard to explain in word. All you gotta know is that it didn't work. The only way Ive been able to fix this problem is to restart my computer, and even then it only re-enables the mixers to work, so they still have a chance of shutting themselves off when I try to run a game or something.

Anyone have any idea what to do? Are my audio mixers !@#$ed in some way, shape, or form?