Sound Problems after forced reboot

[NoShowJoe]

I had an application hang where I had no mouse control or could not use any
keyboard commands. The only thing I could do was force the reboot by turning
off my machine. Of course on restart it did its check disk.

I noticed right away that there were no sounds, or I could not hear them. I
usually keep my sound slider at about one third. Adjusting the volume to
about 2/3 I could hear sounds (all system sounds, sounds from CD's, MP3's).
The system sounds were scratchy and the audio playbacks sounded like they
had the voice frequencies muted. Playing with my SoundMAX digital audio
settings produced some strange results. In the volume control section, I
adjusted the balance control slider off center and noticed that the further
I went in either direction from center produced not balance differences but
equilizer type differences, and substantially improved the listenability of
system sounds and audio playbacks.

One other oddity. When I did the initial forced reboot, the welcome sounds
were extremely weak. However, shutting down normally, the shutdown sounds
were of normal loudness.

I have searched around and found nothing even close to this problem, hence I
am here.

Thanks Helpers.