Weird sound problem on my PC - When playing MP3 files why is there no sound every couple of months?

I’ve got an older PC with XP running just fine except for one thing. Originally I was just using MS Media Player to listen to MP3 songs.

After a couple of years suddenly no more sound from Media Player. When logging in there was still the familiar Windows sound. In some online forum somebody suggested Winamp. I installed it and the sound was back and it was okay for a year or so.

Then magically the same thing happened again. No more sound from Winamp. And still none from Media Player. In some online forum somebody suggested jetAudio Player. Same procedure as every year and the sound was back. For a while.

In another online forum somebody suggested installing a newer Realtek AC97 driver, which I did. After installing and rebooting nothing changed. No sound. At the time I didn’t know about Fluther yet.

Well, it seems that only installing some new media player software can fix this strange problem.

What can I do to get my sound back for all media players?