Sound Card Problem- Hardware or Software

I keep having to uninstall and reinstall the driver from my sound card because of frequent loss of sound. When I run Burn In Test while it's got sound, I don't get any errors but then do get MIDI errors when the sound is down. I can't seem to find any specific program that triggers the loss of sound. I tried the automatic software updater on Creative Labs but got a message that some components were corrupted. I don't want to by another Sound Card if that's not the problem and am not sure how it would be a hardware problem if it does intermittantly work. Any ideas on how to definitively ferret out if it's a hardware vs. software program and fix it for good? Thanks for any help.