Sound turns off randomly, is temporarily fixed by restarting

[June]

Thread title said most of it, after my laptops been on for a random amount of time (anywhere from an hour, to six) the sound cuts out and the only thing that fixes the problem is restarting. When I try to test the sound via the sound properties it says that the sounds being used by another program, but closing all programs doesn't help. Any thoughts?

my specs:

Operating System
Windows 8 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core i5 3427U @ 1.80GHz 51 °C
Ivy Bridge 22nm Technology
RAM
6.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 798MHz (11-11-11-28)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. S550CB (SOCKET 0) 52 °C
Graphics
Generic PnP Monitor (1366x768@60Hz)
Intel HD Graphics 4000 (ASUStek Computer Inc)
2048MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M (ASUStek Computer Inc) 44 °C
Storage
931GB Western Digital WDC WD10JPVX-80JC3T0 (SATA) 28 °C
22GB SanDisk SSD U100 24GB (SSD)
Optical Drives
DTSOFT Virtual CdRom Device
HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GU71N
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio

[naelstrof]

You can try updating your sound drivers. Does the problem persist when using Linux?