Windows 7: Big sound issue!

Hi every1 on 7 forum!
I'm new here and my English is not so good so please don't get angry by it.

I'm a hugh fan of my 7 OS and I wouldn't change it for anything (first thing to know).
On my job I work on CentOS remote server with no GUI and it is hard to learn it so I decided to shrink my C partition to have a dual boot - Windows 7 and Ubuntu.
I suposed that I will learn Ubuntu basics faster if I had GUI. I installed it and start to work. In a pile of installs on Ubuntu I installed some kind of sound drivers update so that it could recodnise my Xonar DS. I managed to do it but it did something to my sound in Win!? In that second of fear I formatted a whole Ubuntu partition from win and then restarted PC. After that I couldn't boot to 7 because of Grub rescue (grrrrrrub). I finally managed to make it work from command prompt on 7 dvd but the sound issue is still there.

Sound works but it is very very wrong. I tried to reinstall sond drivers but it didn't help.



1.) Does anyone know what could be the problem?
(Please help, it is making me crazy)

2.) I'm planning to buy Acronis disk suite for backup, is it worth of money?
Is there any better backup software?
How can Acronis run backup, format and put everthing in place for about 15 minutes when installation of 7 itself needes more than 15 minutes. I supose that then manuall installation of everything is much more stabil then backup, is it?


Thanks a lot!,
Sizif

In regards to your second question. I think that most backup software is worth the money. Personally, I just use Macrium Reflect, which is a free product. The reason that these services can backup and/or restore faster than an installation is due to the fact that they're copying the contents of a drive and then placing those contents backup exactly as they were. There's no installation, no configuration, etc. By the way, 15 minutes is a best case scenario, I'm guessing you can only achieve that with a top of the line hardware setup inlcluding an SSD. Anyway, I recommend that you try out the beta of Acronis and a few other programs before committing. You may find that a free product works just fine.

Ok, tnx a lot, I will format win partition when i get home from work and try Macrium. 15 minutes was an example, not too literal.