A lot of times when I'm using my computer, my sound will just randomly stop working. And I literally mean randomly. It'll stop and I'll seem to have no way of getting it to work again. The only way that I can get it to work again is by logging off my account and then logging back in. I'm guessing that it's some application that's messing up my computer, and that it ends when I log off, but I don't understand why it randomly keeps happening to me.

Specs:
OS - Microsoft XP
Processor - Intel Pentium 2.40 GHz
Memory - 1.2 GBs
Video - Intel integrated (boo) 64 mbs memory
Sound - not really sure. it says SoundMAX Digital Audio. Does that help?

out of memory? bad driver? old driver?

time to reinstall windows.

Do a general system clean if you can't do that, and delete your junk, reinstall drivers, etc...

There's a lot of things that will quit working on windows after a while, and it's unfortunate.

If it's a program that's running which ends after you log off, you'd be able to make that distinction in task manager. Instead, it's probably a driver error which unloads the driver.

Check out DriverPack Solution 10, it's a free driver fixer and updater from some Russian group, but it's translated to English. I'd recommend downloading it and running it on your system, it'll update any of your drivers that are outdated, and best of all it's entirely free. It's worked BETTER than the professional driver solutions, from my experience, and it may solve your problem.