Sound Card Issue and Nero Issue

I believe that there is something wrong with my sound card. I have an HP computer, which means that I have a Realtek High Definition Audio sound card. I've had the computer for about 2 and a half months and everything ran perfectly fine up until recently. Some time during Friday or Saturday I just lost all sound. I don't know how or why. I've also lost the ability to even play media files. For example, if I open Winamp and attempting to play something, it doesn't even start. The same goes for MediaMonkey, Nero, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, YouTube, etc. When I try to run a file in Windows Media Player an alert pops up that says:
Windows Media Player encountered a problem while playing the file. For additional assistance, click Web Help
This page pops up: Microsoft Windows Media - Web Help
I check in the Device Manager and the sound card is listed and says that it is working properly. A full Norton scan doesn't come up with anything and the task manager doesn't show anything fishy running.

Another problem that came up a little more than a week ago, which may or may not be related to this issue, is with Nero. I have a registered version of the software and for some reason with all files the sound was fine but the video was displaying a new frame every, say, few seconds and would blend them (difficult to describe). But now, of course, I can't even run the files with the sound card issue.

CAN ANYONE HELP!?!?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Try updating your drivers.

Most amazing jew boots

It says that they're up to date.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

The only drivers worse than Creative's are Realtek's, infamous for crashing games and VLC. Try a really old version of the drivers, it might help if you're lucky.

Or you could try disabling hardware acceleration or something, start -> run > dxdiag.

How ya doing, buddy?