"safely" is hard. The right way to manage this stuff is through the Device Manager.
- Do a run: Win+r
- Type
devmgmt.msc
in the run dialog and hit Enter
From there you should be able to see your sound card. There's a lot of stuff in there which could break your system badly, so be careful. Right click and disable, or right-click and try to "Update Driver Software"
None of this is ever really "safe", but most of the time it's okay. Be sure that you've got a second machine or a friend who can help you should you get stranded. Windows takes pains to try to protect you from clobbering yourself, but the one time you really need it to work and have no way out, it will fail.
(to reinstall, you can uninstall the device and re-detect it and/or launch the driver's install program.)
1Can you mention the sound card name,Operating system? If you captured the error message upload it, so than we can help straight forward to your problem. – Desingh – 2011-11-24T19:02:57.650
I was actually hoping for a general way to reinstall drivers :) But, it's an on-board sound-card, of the
– Simon Verbeke – 2011-11-24T19:10:40.360Gigabyte GA-MA790X G4P
. It's running Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit. The exact problem is specified here: http://superuser.com/questions/361115/sound-driver-sound-card-or-something-else-is-crashing-everything-that-uses-soundI cannot locate a
GA-MA790X G4P
on Gigabyte's website -- there are ones that are close, but nothing including the G4P in the model name. It may be more helpful if you told us the specs of the sound card specifically. What audio drivers are you currently using? – Garrett – 2011-11-24T20:05:39.647