Fullscreen Games Mute my Sound

[The Minted Lady]

I've been trying to find a solution to this and I'm hoping someone here might have one.

Every once in a while, a game I purchase that starts out in Full screen or Exclusive full screen will mute my sound. The game boots up just fine, but it isn't until I've been sitting on the main menu for a while that I realize the lack of sound is because my whole audio has been muted. I minimize the game and check my audio settings--doesn't look like anything's changed and the volume is up. My computer still acknowledges the same default sound source as it did before the game came on.

Unfortunately the only way I've found to fix this is to constantly minimize/maximize the game over and over until sound is restored. If I'm lucky, it'll come back when the game is up so I can just start playing. Other times, it'll come back when the game is minimized, which risks it being muted again when I maximize it. I have tried switching games out of full screen mode to fix this, but unfortunately the act of changing it can also trigger the game to mute my system. It's become a frustrating battle that makes me wish fewer games would start in full screen mode.

Again, when I minimize the game and check my sound settings, it doesn't appear that anything has changed. Volume is up everywhere. The game in the sound mixer is not muted at all. Nothing is, but for some reason my sound is completely gone unless I do that ridiculous dance mentioned above.