Preferred audio device "greyed out"

for seamingly no reason at all, my preferred playback device was greyed out
or disabled while the computer was on and while I stepped away for an hour.
When I returned, no directsound applications would work, giving errors like
"no device installed" or "could not run wavoutput" my professional ASIO
drivers still work however and the preferred record device is still active.
within an hour, my computer went from using my normal WDM directsound output
to using the tiny internal PC speaker making those little annoying beeps. I
reinstalled the soundcard drivers and even installed a different C-media
soundcard and the problem is still there.