Tigger29, is your onboard sound Realtek ?
Actually yes it is, however the drivers Windows was installing said "High Definition Audio Device" but there were two instances installed, and then there was a third audio device for my Turtle Beach 5.1 USB Headset, "Audio Advantage SRM Device."
In my bios, I disabled the on-board audio. Upon reboot, now I still had one instance of "High Definition Audio Device". That ended up being the HDMI audio drivers for the video card. I could have SWORE that I disabled that, but now that I think of it I think I'm thinking of when I disabled it for a squadmate's system I was building. Anyway I have that disabled in the Device Manager (I can't find any other way to disable it). I downloaded the Realtek drivers from my motherboard's website (ASRock G43Twins-FullHD) and the Audio Drivers from Turtle Beach's website. I then fully uninstalled the Turtle Beach software AND the realtek software, as well as right clicking on them from the Device Manager and "uninstalling" as well as checking the box to remove all drivers as well.
I then proceeded to install the Realtek drivers from my download, and after testing that rebooted and installed the Turtle Beach software. After another reboot I have everything back up and running, and now show the following three entries in my Device Manager:
-Audio Advantage SRM Device (This is for the Turtle Beach headphones)
-High Definition Audio Device - DISABLED (This is the HDMI audio for the video I don't use anyway)
-Realtek High Definition Audio (This is the onboard audio and set as the DEFAULT audio device in the sound properties)
I went into Aces High OFFLINE mode and played with the sound settings and got everything back to normal. I've noticed that the sound properties for AH get kind of goofy whenever a change is made. Simply selecting the proper device for the headphones and for the speakers is not enough. I've found that you have to click ACCEPT and then back out and back in to the menu and switch all four devices to "SPEAKER", click accept again and then switch them all back to "HEADSET" once again regardless to how it was set before. It's kind of like it forgets what to do with what and when you make a change (even if you are changing it BACK to where it was to begin with) then it updates and then everything is good. It's just a small bug that hopefully will get fixed eventually.
It's kind of fun to set up the sounds for the speakers and the vox for the headset, but to me that kind of defeats the purpose of having a surround sound headset... especially one that covers your ears and blocks the sound from the speakers... so I run it all through the headset.
Anyway, I'll keep you guys posted if I experience another crash. I honestly don't know for sure if this is the issue or not, but it feels good to have the actual "realtek" drivers installed now, instead of generic microsoft drivers... I just have to remember not to let it update them.