Need to restart my laptop every time to get sound.

I have the same problem with my Samsung laptop on Windows 8. I tried all the fixes, all the drivers are updated, it says everything is working properly but there's still no sound and the only thing that helps is restarting the computer. Firstly the sound disappeared only after the laptop came from sleep mode, now the sound dies also in the middle of me playing something (was watching a video on Youtube and then suddenly it wouldn't play, said there's been an error and then all sound died on my computer, some programs still play the file with no sound, Windows Media Player sends an error msg that the file cannot be played). I've searched everywhere for a fix but still no luck.

Can not a single person at Microsoft nor the rest of the internet find a solution to this problem? I've been having this problem for a while, and so have other people, and I haven't found anything useful anywhere.

I have the exact same problem with Windows 8. My computer is an Asus laptop with Realtek High Definition Audio. I have tried all of the fixes you suggested. The only way I can get the sound to work is to restart the computer. This is beyond frustrating. It started a week ago.

You may have a different problem than what started this discussion if it started about a week ago.  This recent problem appears to be coming from OPTIONAL (for my HPEnvydv7) update KB2962407.  Remove it and see if it fixes your problem, it did mine.  If it doesn't, you can always reinstall the update.  If you search the community with "audio sound" you will find several discussions with step-by-step instructions on how to remove the update if you don't know how.

Unfortunately didn't work for me.

As a temporary solution "scan for hardware changes" works for me! thanks