Sound Problem

[Supergoal]

Another problem, another pain in the..

This morning my PC was fine and was working.
I got home after work turned it on and no sound at all from the start.

Why on earth would the PC suddenly lose sound.
When I try to play any sound I get a message saying could not play back, or there is a problem. No specific error code is given. I've tried re-installing the motherboard drivers and rebooting which didn't work.

Complete randomness of PC behaviour.

[Supergoal]

I couldn't fix it through driver updates, pc help files or kicking it. So I took drastic measures and reinstalled the os.
It works now but I think there must have been a way to fix it.

[Hohum]

The default device may have changed in Windows for whatever reason, thus it wouldn't have made use of it.

[abigsmurf]

Have you upgraded your graphics drivers?

Good chance that they've enabled HDMI sound