I recently installed a Sound Blaster card because I thought my mic wasn't working and wanted to see if this would fix it. Well, in the midst of my first boot with the card installed I realized that all I had to do on my integrated sound was to enable the input port. Duh. I then took the Sound Blaster back out and ever since certain games that worked fine before will either not start because they say they can't initialize the sound, or they just won't have sound while running. I have sound on many other games still and .mpg, mp3 stuff is fine. I've looked at /proc/asounds/cards and other files in this directory and nothing seems out of the ordinary. They're all just listing the one integrated card. I've tried forcing alsa to start from KDE control center/sound system and unselecting automatic and selecting alsa. No luck.

Any ideas what it could be or what I could check?
Any files you need to see?

Thanks for you help.

/etc/modprobe.conf
lsmod

... look for rogue drivers. Also check the syslog next time it happens.
... manually remove all alsa and oss modules and reboot?

K, thanks, but I'm a little confused. Do you need to see these files? What would I be looking for?

How would I check the syslog?

When you installed the soundblaster... what did you actually do?

To look at the files:

cat /etc/modprobe.conf
... you are looking for any trace of the soundblaster driver or settings. Drivers can be loaded on the fly, so something that ain't in lsmod list right now can still show up later.

dmesg | tail
... this will display the last so-many entries in the syslog. You are looking for messages concerning sound or audio.

Another thing to try is to run an affected game in CLI by entering the executable name, then watching the messages. They won't all produce output and some programs need a "verbose" flag.

Programs will not load if they think something else has claimed the souncard. This is not so important with very modern distros which seem to be able to blend the audio streams from different apps.

Ok. My modprobe.conf file is this:
alias eth0 r8169
alias eth1 r8169
alias scsi_hostadapter ahci
alias scsi_hostadapter1 pata_amd
options snd cards_limit=8
options snd-hda-intel index=0
alias snd-card-7 snd-usb-audio
options snd-usb-audio index=7
options snd-ca0106 index=0

Not really sure which is which here.

When I installed the card I just put it in. I didn't install any software or drivers 'cause I located the mic problem before I got to that.

Any problems w/ the file?

... did you boot with the card installed? If so, then it was probably detected and configured. The drivers are already installed.

You seem to have an onboard intel soundcard and something plugged into USB - a camera with built-in mic?

Get your sound to fail then do the dmesg thing.

I did boot with it installed.
The only things I have plugged into USB are a mouse, keyboard, joystick and external HD.

I can't find anything at all related to sound in dmesg after the games fail to start. Running my games from CLI doesn't produce anything.

Also, this part seems kinda strange to me... According to my list of installed programs, I have ALSA installed, but I can't get any response from anything on the command line regarding it. ALSA, ALSACONF, ALSAMIXER, nothing. My mixer in fedora is called Kmix.

What could this be all about?

I'm starting to wonder, since I know what sound card I have, (the Intel one) if there's just a place where I could delete any other reference to anything else, wherever that might be.

Any more thoughts?

I am immediately suspicious of that usb sound entry in modprobe.conf ... comment them out and reboot?

Also suggest changing out all usb devices. Use those usb-ps/2 thingies.
lsusb
... what does your system think is plugged in?

Check the alsa modules are loading - especially after a sound failure.
lsmod | grep snd

I haven't kept up with fedora and have no idea what they are using for tools these days. Have a check on what is available with: "apropos alsa". It may be amixer et al. It may be that they expect you to use the KDE interface... especially if you chose not to install the CLI tools packages.

Hah! I just had a funny idea ... you could try switching onboard sound off in BIOS, boot with no soundcard at all and let fedora sort that out. Then shut-down, switch the sound back on, and boot.

Here are the results of lsmod | grep snd


So quoting stuff out of modprobe.conf might work? Which exact lines should I quote out?

Thanks very much for your help so far. I think we're on the right track here.

... that's "comment" out.

These ones:You wanna go back and edit the post so you only list modules once?
Anyway, I see your intel there and no soundblaster drivers. Which is as it should be. (snd-emu10k*)

Presumably this list is from when the sound goes?
So when you play something where the sound vanishes... is there a difference? What about dmesg | tail ?

So, I found out some interesting facts. I'm using KDE. When I boot into Gnome, there is no problem at all with sound and these programs trying to run. Gnome only finds the one card in its sound card detection, which is correct since it's all I have installed at this point. I told Gnome to re-write the sound config files, but this made no difference when I booted KDE back up. I'd really like to continue using KDE. Perhaps I can just re-install KDE?

Anyway, back in KDE. dmesg | tail shows nothing at all different right before the program tries to run and right after it fails.

I commented the lines that were suggested from modprobe.conf. This made no difference, and lsmod | grep snd shows the same exact output as it did before and while a program with no sound is running.

There are only a handful of programs that are doing this. Programs that, however, I'd really like to use.

I'd like to resolve this issue rather than working around it with something such as moving to Gnome.

Any more ideas? I'm willing to re-install KDE if this is a possibilty.

Thanks for your help.

Bump. Come on guys! Why just KDE and not Gnome? Any ideas?

It's in your KDE configuration - likely you booted to KDE when the soundblaster was inserted and KDE has remembered that. Looks like something to report as a bug to the KDE people.

I've actually discovered that it's only on root user in KDE that the sound is screwed up. Any other user on any desktop environment works fine. Go Figure.

Thanks for your help. I'll just use another user.

Ok, after all the head-scratching and frustration, I finally figured out how to fix my 'lack of sound on certain programs' problem.

Props to Simon Bridge for the help.

The contents of /etc/modprobe.conf by default would read: Whatever is showing up as snd-usb-audio is causing a conflict. The only devices I have that are usb are a keyboard, mouse, a joystick, and a hard drive. I was considering switching out my keyboard and mouse for ps2 with adapters to see if it changed anything but one time while booting into a different user (other than root) I noticed I had sound. I checked out the modprobe and it was different. This time revealing this: Nothing usb and also no reference to "index=7". I took note of this. Re-wrote my modprobe.conf (after backing up the original) with the working contents that I happened to save (luckily) and voila. Sound in everything.

I have yet to find the conflicting device and will start with the adapters, but in the mean time, I know a quick fix. When I find out I'll post it here just for reference.

Thanks for all the help guys. Esp. Simon Bridge.