8pre USB not recognised, or no sound at start-up

[Tzakuk]

I have been having these issues almost half the time I start up.

-Rarely, the 8pre is not recognized at all, and I have to restart, sometimes just the sound card, sometimes the whole system.

-More frequently, there is no sound. Often I can remedy this as follows:

-- Right click the speaker icon in the system tray, and select 'Playback devices'
-- Select 'MOTU Main Out 1-2' and Click 'Properties'
-- Click the 'Supported Formats' tab
-- Highlight either of the Sample Rates and click 'Test'

This has to be done once for each sample rate, and only the end of the test tone sounds.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

ASUS A55BM-E, AMD A10-7850K 4CPU+8GPU R7 @3.7Ghz, 16GB DDR3@1600 (PC3 12800), 1TB WD Blue SATA 6.0Gb/s, Windows 8.1 64 OEM