Windows 7 Issue with audio devices

Ok, I have an HP laptop which initially had Vista 64 on it. I reformatted and reinstalled with Windows 7 64 Ultimate. After the install, I went to HP's website and downloaded all their drivers and packages for my laptop, for Win7 64.

However, periodically my sound would just simply quit working and I'd have to reboot. Well, this morning when I noticed it wasn't working, I was in the middle of other stuff and couldn't reboot right away. So instead I tried going to the device manager and disabling the audio device and then re-enabling it to see if it would work (i've done this plenty of times in Vista and XP and it's worked sometimes). Well, where I appear to have made a mistake is in going to the sounds and devices panel, instead of the device manager. When I hit the "disable" command on the audio device, instead of going gray or showing up with a red x, it just disappeared. I can still see my audio devices just fine in my device manager, but they're not showing up in the sounds and devices panel. Device manager says they're working fine, and I've tried reinstalling drivers, but to no avail. There's nowhere in the sounds and devices panel for me to scan for new devices.

I've got no clue what to do at this point... ideas, anyone? Thanks so much!