Alienware MX17 R4 Weird Sound Issue

From time to time my sound will randomly stop working on a fresh boot. Multiple restarts do not work along with reinstallling driver. What gets it to work every single time is unplugging all usb devices and powering down the machine. After powering on the machine the sound works fine. Any ideas what is causing this?

 

Many users have reported problems with the R4 sound disappearing for no reason. Here is the last thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/702195-brand-new-m17x-r4-no-sound-card.html

Alienware_Luis posted a fix in his reply...it involved flashing back to the A05 BIOS. If that doesn't work, PM him and he will get y'all fixed up.

 

Yes, that still happens to me with the latest Creative drivers. It's random, too, sometimes it will detect the card sometimes it won't. Usually a restart fixes it for me.

I also have the same thing with my graphics card. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Again a restart usually fixes it - I think choosing Win 8 over 7 was a bad idea.

 

The same issue exists with Windows 8. Apparently with Windows 8, you can uninstall the sound device and let Windows install the generic audio codec for it and it will work just fine without disappearing anymore.

EDIT: Mr. Fox has a possible fix in his latest post here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-m18x-r2-m17x-r4-audio-fix-2.html#post9009004

 

This is right, if you have Windows 8 the way to fix it is to uninstall the audio drivers and let Windows take control of them.