My Sound Keeps Messen Up!!

[drakers]

my computer ,not very old and was working fine but the last week the sound keeps stopping working it will stop in all my games and in windows will say....media error:cannot play back audio stream:no audio hardware is available......now if i restart the computer it comes back working as normal but then, if theres no sound on computer for 20 min it stops working again....reinstalled drivers and updated amny times but no change.....pls hlp me its drivin me nuts. Also i play a game called world of warcraft and since this startred happening, everytime i log into game i get the user agreament page which your not suppose to get unless youve just installed the game or downloaded a patch, very odd. I have a pcchips motherboard with onboard sound (realteccAC'97 audio controller). I even tried a new pci soundcard but same result. Ive checked device manager for problems but was find except one time when yellow question mark next to audio controller i updated driver it went away but still having same problem

[Zerotech]

It sounds like your onboard sound is unreliable, or you have the wrong driver installed.

If you're going to try a PCI soundcard (which is a better choice), you will need to uninstall the drivers for the onboard sound and disable the onboard sound in the BIOS of your motherboard. Then you can install the PCI soundcard and its drivers.

[NooNoo]

Welcome to Windrivers Drakers

Apart from Zerotech's good advice, I want to know what slot you put the pci sound card in? How many white pci slots do you have? Counting from nearest the processor, (top being 1) what slot number did you put it in?