Sound Card disappeared in sounds playback devices

I have a Sound Blaster Audigy card (SB0570), and when I go into "sounds" and "playback devices" it is no longer there starting today. I've always alternated back and forth between my external speakers (through the sound blaster card) and my built in pc sound card (for headphones/earphones), rather than to keep plugging them in and out each time I want to switch, I just used the playback sounds option to switch if I wanted to hear out loud via my speakers or if I wanted to use earphones.

Today when I went to switch to my external speakers, the option for sound blaster was not there anymore. I did a reboot, I unseated the card and seated it back in and still no sign of the card option shows up. I tried to download the drivers and it wouldn't let me install the drivers saying there was no compatible device detected in my computer.

Is there anything else I can try or is this a sign that the card itself just died somehow?

 

windows 7, service pack 1, 64 bit, the device manager shows no yellow/conflicts...the only things there now are: Nvidia Virtual Audio Device (Wave Extensible)(WDM) and Realtek High Definition Audio. There used to be more in the list but now it's all gone.

It just disappeared today...was always there and working yesterday and for a long time. Not sure what changed.

 

I don't know if I carried out any updates. It just does so on it's own. Should there be updates I shouldn't install? I checked the history and I see the computer automatically installed some on June 11th, but I'm pretty sure my sound blaster was working on June 12th. It's only today (June 13th) that I noticed I couldn't get any sound from my speakers so I thought it was still on earphones, but when I went to check the playback devices, the options were gone for soundblaster.

I could try a restore point I guess and see.
I really hate windows updates...if this is the reason why it caused my sound card to vanish, I'm going to turn off updates permanently. I find the updates a waste of space, and time, and I don't think it's ever done anything good for me, only bad.

Sorry, im just a bit frustrated but I really appreciate that you are helping me out.

 

I just attempted a restore point. There was only 2 to pick from. One was todays and another was June 9th and both said CRITICAL at the end of the row.

I tried June 9th and then after a few minutes it said a shadow copy failed because the session timed out? Then it said, CRITICAL FAILURE. *facepalm*

I don't know what caused my sound blaster card to disappear. I don't even know how to check if the card is actually working or not.

Oddly, another one of my external hard drives also seems to have died today as well. I didn't think it was related or connected but maybe it is? When I recall, I first booted up and it told me something like 4th master slave error or something and stalled and kept me in a loop going to bios and restarting again.

Then i thought it was the external hard drive so I unplugged it and the computer booted up fine. At that point, I still hadn't known the sound blaster card was missing until maybe 30 minutes later when I wanted to hear sound come through my speakers, I went to switch the playback device and that's when it was gone. When I try to plug the HDD back in with the power cable, I can hear it trying to start up or spin and it resets 3 or 4 times then it just shuts off. I can hear and feel it spinning and clicking then spinning and clicking and then it shuts off. So I don't know if that is related...if something happened and killed my external hard drive and sound card....everything else appears to be working fine (main hdd, motherboard, monitors, fans etc), and plus, I always use an APC UPS surge protector and battery backup.

Is it possible windows update did this to my sound card and even hard drive? Or is it more likely they are both dead and it was just coincidence they died on the same day.

 

is there a way for me to test if my sound card still works? I'm on the verge of just ordering a cheap 5.1 surround sound sound card right now but not 100% sure yet if my card is in fact gone or just something else is preventing my computer from detecting it.

It won't detect it even after reseating it and trying to install the drivers, it will say no compatible device detected in my computer.

 

I have completed the scan and have the log now. Should I post it? It's really long.
It said windows resource protection found some corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them.

 

I tried the system restore again worked for June 11th and even after that, the sound blaster playback device is not showing up. I don't know how I can tell if it's the actual card that's not being detected or the computer not detecting it.

The option I can try is to install the card in another computer and see if the it shows up in the other computer or not.

If it does, then it means something is wrong with my computer settings and if it doesn't show up then most likely it means the card is dead right?