Everything seems to be working fine now. However, every time I restarted Windows my speakers would be disabled. Looking at Playback Devices panel (right click on the speaker icon on the Windows 7 Taskbar and select Playback Devices) I noticed what was happening was Windows was making my HDMI monitor my default playback device. I’d go in and reselect the speakers and even make that ‘Default’ device. However, upon reboot it would revert back to HDMI. I did a batch of Windows updates and after the reboot was back to HDMI being the default playback device. However, while I was in the Playback Devices panel this time, I selected the HDMI device and clicked Properties. At the very bottom is a selection for Device usage. I have changed it to Don’t use this device (disable). I then selected the speakers again and made them default. So, this should take care of this…well I’ll find out next I reboot.
