Why does my computer keep losing all sound?

We recently got rid of our old hard drive and put a new one in our system. We installed all the drivers necessary and everything has been working fine for a couple of weeks, no problems at all. I run good spyware and anti-virus protection programs and all Windows updates are current. The issue started today as I finished downloading a couple of songs. As I was in the middle of playing the first song, I lost all sound on the computer. I restarted the computer and the sound came back as normal. I started playing another song that I had downloaded and the same thing happened within about 10 seconds. I scanned the individual songs that I had downloaded, even though they are legitimate files from a well-known mp3 website. The files were not corrupt in any way. Does anyone have any other suggestions as to why my sound would all of a sudden start having problems? I've never had any problems or issues with this in the past.

Why does my computer keep losing all sound?house call

really hard to tell from here but are u sure u have the right codecs??what happens if u change ur media player?? or check ur sound card n see if it has the latest drivers ..

Why does my computer keep losing all sound?matchless

Go to the sound card manufacturer's web site and download the latest audio drivers. If your computer is a name brand like Dell or HP, then go to their web site. If your sound card is built into your motherboard, then you'll have to go to the motherboard manufacturer's web site.

If new drivers haven't fixed the problem, then the problem is with your .mp3 audio codec.

If you use Media Player to play your .mp3 files, then you can try downloading and re-installing Media Player 11 from Microsoft's web site.