[quote="DasBub"]An interesting quirk I noticed on my own machine...

If my machine's been powered down for a few hours or so, I get constant ILLEGAL SUMOUTs. They usually persist until:

A) I reboot, or

B) the machine spontaneously reboots itself.

In any case, once the machine has rebooted everything works fine. No ILLEGAL SUMOUTs, no problems.

I've heard of warming-up your car, but this is ridiculous :)[/quote]
You might try reseating your memory. It might not make proper contact when it's cold (the connectors expand slightly when warmed up).

In my experience, bad sound drivers cause errors only when sound is being played, and possibly only when certain kinds of sounds (such as midi versus speech, etc.) are being played.