Laptop audio keeps cutting out - any fixes?

Sometimes when I boot up my laptop, the audio just isn't there.
When this happens, the volume slider in the taskbar icon behaves strangely; instead of letting me slide it all the way down to 0%, it gets stuck at about 10%.
When the sound is actually working, the slider functions perfectly fine and allows me to mute it completely.
To get the sound back, I am forced to perform a full shutdown and restart the machine.
It isn't a mute issue, and I have verified that all my settings are configured correctly.
I have absolutely no audio output—nothing from music players, YouTube, or any other source.
What is the permanent fix for this?
My laptop is fairly new, only about nine months old, running Windows 8. The model is an
HP 250 g1 notebook pc

Hey there,

I’m guessing this error is popping up because you have headphones, speakers, or a webcam plugged into a USB port? Or maybe you're routing audio through HDMI or a line-in?

If you have any of those hooked up, the Computer often gets confused about which one should take priority, leading to this kind of conflict.

If you aren't actually using any of those, give one of these a shot:

1) Swap out your headphones or speakers just to make sure the hardware itself isn't the culprit.
2) Figure out which sound card you're running and try a clean reinstall of the drivers.
3) Check if you have two different sound cards active at once—like an integrated one and a discrete one. You'll probably need to manually disable one of them.

http://www8.hp.com/hr/hr/drivers.html

Just check the specific model you've got under the hood and grab the audio drivers for Windows 8 that match your build,
then go ahead and wipe those old ones out before doing a clean reinstall.
Let me know if that does the trick.

Right-click on "This PC" and hit properties. Look under "System type"—it’ll tell you if you're running a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows 8. Pick the specific driver that matches your setup. That’s your model right there.

For Windows 8 (32-bit), download the audio driver here (about 170MB):

http://h20565.www2.hp.com/portal/sit...hetoken#Driver — Audio

For Windows 8 (64-bit), it's the same deal:

http://h20565.www2.hp.com/portal/sit...hetoken#Driver — Audio

Thanks for all the input.
No, I don't have anything plugged in via USB. Up until two months ago, I was using an external USB sound card with a headphone amp, and everything worked perfectly then. This issue only started popping up in the last two weeks, during which time I haven't even been playing music or using audio at all.
Realtek Speakers are set as my default playback device.
The audio is working fine again for now.
I'll wait a few days to see if the sound cuts out again before I try any of those suggestions, PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
For the record, the laptop is running a 64-bit OS.
My last resort will be to uninstall and reinstall everything, since I'm hardly a PC expert.