Presario R30000 SoundMax Driver Problem

[coyote24]

Hello Experts, I just got this compaq laptop a month ago. I have quite a bit of stuff on it. It had been running just fine, but for some reason but suddenly I am getting BSODs with the error from smwdm.sys as the culprit. That file is related to the SoundMax Audio driver. I have tried reinstalling the driver, that didn't seem to work. When I disable the device, that seems to prevent the crash. Another thing, it seems to crash more often when I am downloading. Compaq doesn't even have an audio driver available on their site for my model, which I think is kinda sad. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks

[NooNoo]

Before you do anything, check for warranty status. You don't want to accidently invalidate the warranty. I say this because it could be a hardware fault - in which case you need to get it seen to.

try updating the sound driver first (http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareCategory?product=385163&lang=en&cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&)

Have you done any windows updates recently?