lost sound

[ryancw]

I'm running Libranet 3.0 pretty much stock. I'm probably pre-stable in Debian by now.

Sometimes when I boot up the computer, sound works fine. I can play streaming radio stations on RealPlayer, play CDs, etc. At those times, I look in Adminmenu and see sound card listed like this:

Ensoniq AudioPCI ENS1371
driver 1371
hardware mixing no

And the test sound works fine


Other times, whatever is needed to play sound seems not to boot up. At those times, RealPlayer *looks* like it is playing, but no sound comes out of the speakers. At those times, I look in Adminmenu, and there is no sound card listed. And no test sound will play.

This is probably too little to go on, but anyone have any ideas? Or, what more can I tell you? I would like to make this not happen any more. Barring that, I'd settle for a way to "turn on" my sound, without rebooting my machine (which is what I do now in this situation.)

Thanks.

[uteck]

Do you have more then 1 sound card? Or perhaps have a modem, sometimes they get mixed up with sound cards.
Try running alsaconf as root as see if it will redetect your sound.

[ryancw]

I was a little late getting back to this, mainly because often my sound works just fine, so I forget about the problem. But tonight it was acting up again. No sound would play, just as I described above. Even two re-boots didn't fix it. I noticed in those messages that flash past on the screen during boot up a message that ALSA "failed," "no sound card detected."

So I tried your advice, and alsaconf seemed to be doing something. It detected my sound card, said it was reconfiguring it, loading drivers, and setting the volume. Then it said it was all done, sound was ready to use, and "have fun."

But Adminmenu still listed no sound cards, and sound would not play.

Any further suggestions?

Thanks.