Hello. I recently installed debian sarge for the millionth time on my laptop . I am running the 2.6.8 kernel with Gnome desktop.

My questions are:

1. My Sound. Is there any be all end all guide? this has been the biggest obstical by far. I have read countless web pages, and none are noob friendly. I do not have alsa installed yet, not positive i need it. My Kernel sees my onboard card (cirrus logic )just fine, and loads the ac'97 drivers for it and the intel_18x0 module as well. I dont see any error message at boot or in dmesg.

2. Desktop resolution. I got my Nvidia driver installed just fine, and i ran dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86. i seem to be stuck at 800x600 or lower. when i ran the x config i selected the option for 1020x740. gnome doesnt see the the 1020x740 option in desktop configuration.

3. does debian come with any hard drive diagnostic utilities/programs?

i would greatly appreciate any help in these matters

1- You need alsa. It should be installed by default. Try alsamixer.
2- Try to edit manually /etc/x11/xorg.conf ( or maybe x86config.cfg).
3- hdparm is usually shipped with many distro. Smartmontools too.

what laptop model? What are suggested settings for lappy screen? Knowing those you can edit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 for best screen. www.linux-laptop.net may show your lappy with debian installed with guides how user installed and config'd debian. Good luck

Thank you for the suggestions on the xfree86 configuration. I am now at my preffered resolution after a reboot. Sound is still an issue though. my laptop is a toshiba satellite 3005-304. When I check the start up messages it tells me that the ac_97 and the intel_18x0 modules are loaded sucessfully, and the IRQ setting of my card but there is a message about failing to initialize codec 0. when i check my sound configuration file it list my card (cirrus logic ), but that i have no drivers/modules associated with it. Since i am a noob still, is there a way to link a specific module the the hardware? I am somewhat familliar with modconf and module assistant. I see no errors when i run dmesg.

you need to know exactly what sound card your lappy has. Then google how it is set up or to find what driver or module is needed.(Sometimes the i810 has to be blacklisted under some circumstances.) What modem does it have? What is the nic? Someone else may have that sound card/chip working in sarge. What does lspci and lsmod show? They will give us more info to help.
Glad to hear your display is set up well.
Check out http://www.togaware.com/linux/survivor/ for debian sarge desktop survivor guide.

I finally got sound to come out this this black box of dispair. But the sound quality is low and choppy, i've tried a few diffrent mixers and still no improvement, though i am glad to have sound.

gryphonsword, thougt you might find this interesting http://lightconsulting.com/~thalakan/laptop-notes.html. Have fun with debian

You don't need alsa installed, I use OSS instead. If your sound is not working and your computer is recognizing the hardware try this. Make sure you are in the audio group for the computer. If you're not in the audio group then audio wont work for that user. When I installed and sound didn't work for me that's what fixed it, adding my user to the audio group.

As far as the modules, if you know the name of the module you need just run modprobe <module name> and that should do it. Once you know the module and if it works just add it to the modules file in /etc and that will take care of it loading at boot.

To find what soundcard is detected/used at terminal,as root,do lspci | grep audio and for module used lsmod | grep snd or lsmod grep | sound-card-name. You may want to apt-get install alsa-os for compatibility.
If you have 2 soundcards you can disable an onboard card in bios and use the better card, or use the onboard card and remove the second.
If using intel 8x0 module for sound and also for a modem, the system may think modem is soundcard--and loads the modem 1st-- then there can be sound problem.
You may have to blacklist that module in hotplug or discover config file. Hopefully not. Good luck.