Sound cuts out, pc locks up, ubrupt violent 'processing' noises??? (help)

[Apathy]

Alright, so even as i am typing this, i am having this problem.

Running vista64 home premium. auzentech prelude sound card.

My pc (rig in sig) has recurring problems with its audio. Pretty much without fail, at least once a day, my sound will cut out immediately following some beeps and ubrupt noises coming from my speakers.

Symptoms:
- No audio from any application.
- If i try to play a song in winamp, the song will not even start, the time on the song wont budge from 0:00, the slider reflecting progress of the song will not move.
- Rarely it will cause my pc to lockup.
- Sometimes after the loud noises start, they will go away within 30 seconds, and my sound will come back.

Solutions tried:
- Restarting pc restores sound, but sometimes the static and 'processing' noises will start before i even get passed the windows login screen.
- I have tried reinstalling audio drivers, no change.
- Attempted switching from "wave" to "direct sound" with teamspeak to see if that was causing the problem since i routinely have teamspeak up and running.

Later today i will try putting in my old m-audio revolution to see if that has eny effect.

Has anyone had any similar problems to this? It is really annoying me, makes me jump everytime it happens.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[Bigbacon]

is the prelude based off the X-fi??

 

[Apathy]

yes its the auzentech prelude x-fi

http://www.auzentech.com/site/products/x-fi_prelude.php

 

[Apathy]

i just came across this:

http://forum.overclock3d.net/showthread.php?t=20544

basically talks about nvidia chipset problems and something about SCP, and having to set the bitrate down to correspond with clock settings?

anyways, i switched my rate to 16bit/44100kHz (cd quality)

so far no issues. only been a few minutes. lets see where this goes.

*EDIT*
SCRATCH THAT, problems just started again.

 

[Apathy]

sitting here, fiddling with bitrates. this is making me want to go downstairs, plug in the compressor, hook up the siding nail gun, and shoot metal spikes into my brain.

this has suddenly become so much worse since reinstalling the drivers. i want to kill the part of my brain where the aggravation is causing swelling.

if the bit rate fiddling does nothing, hopefully later when i have the time today, ill swap out the soundcards.

please god help me. or kill me. or fix my sound. do one of em. and do it fast.

thanks in advance god.