Help me debug my strange audio problem

I've been happily using my Fortissimo II sound card for many years now. The other day I opened my case and didn't change anything but when I turned the PC back on, I had no sound.

Windows explorer would be frozen for about 30 seconds after booting up, presumably confused about my hardware situation. Under sounds and audio devices, everything was grayed out under the Volume/Audio/Voice tabs. It said "no hardware detected." However, under the hardware tab it listed my Fortissimo.

Also, under the device manager, it listed my Fortissimo and said working no problems (it always says that even when it's not true).

Whenever I try to play a sound with winamp using waveOut plugin, it says "no sound devices found; install a sound card" and "a device ID has been used that is out of range for your system."

Ok, so I turned my PC off, and look at my sound card. This particular card is connected to the motherboard and has another gray wire that plugs into the side. Both are still firmly affixed. All the other connections in there seem to be firm as well.

Next, I uninstall my sound driver, reboot, and reinstall my fortissimo drivers. It says install successful, great. However, nothing has changed. All the exact same problems are there.

My motherboard is an ABIT Kn8 which comes with some Realtek sound driver. Well, it's better than nothing, so I uninstall my fortissimo drivers, reboot install the latest Realtek drivers and reboot again. Realtek console comes up and I click the "test" button. Woohoo! Sound plays out of all 4 speakers just fine. Then I try winamp: same problem. It says install a sound card. I look in my sound properties in control panel, and everything is still gray -- it says I have no sound device.

How can this be? I am completely confused now. My motherboard is very new, I bought it last year...I have not had any other problems. I have had problems with my Fortissimo in the past -- it randomly stopped working in an event similar to this, and eventually started working again when I jiggled the connecting gray wire around...but now I am not even using the fortissimo, I'm using my motherboard sound card...and I don't understand how it could be that the sound plays fine on the test but not anything else.

no ideas, anyone?

Don't know what to tell you. Try a different PCI slot, maybe clearing the BIOS (to reset the PCI IRQ autoconfig info), and if all else fails reinstall Windows. If you go through all that and still no sound, well... something is obviously, seriously wrong. I could see the Fortissimo giving up the ghost, but I imagine that after a reinstall the onboard sound will work properly at very least.