I know this is a silly question, but did you let windows update the drivers for the sound card?
Not saying this is the cause, mainly because I don't know what actually happened to the driver/software theearl has, but, everyone, PLEASE never install a driver from Windows Update. DON'T let it update everything automatically or it will cause issues. I found that out the hard way when my graphics card and sound card both stopped working after a win update and the only cure was to install the original driver. Since then I always go straight to the manufacturer for stuff like that. You only get bitten once, shall we say.
You know how bad the software is, would you trust them to make programs for other people's stuff?