Hello, I have a really stupid problem I am hoping to get some help with.

The other day I installed openSUSE 10.2 on my laptop (based around an Intel 915 express chipset). Basically, I have no sound, and in trying to fix it myself, I made things worse. It used to be that kmixer launched on startup, sounds played in amarok, I just couldn't hear anything. So I downloaded what I thought were the right drivers (no idea what they were now), but they turned out to be the wrong ones, and now no sound applications work (amarok, kmix, etc). YaST reports my sound device (Intel HD) as 'unconfigured', but throws me kernel module errors when I try to configure it. I cannot remove this device from the sound module, nor can I add a new one. I (think I) have installed ALSA updates etc, but nothing I try have been told. I spent 2 hours last night on the openSUSE forums trying to get a solution, but nothing that was suggested to me worked. I am hoping to get some help here.

Can somebody please help me before I reinstall Windows XP????

EDIT: I am fairly green when it comes to Linux, so I shall need some pretty basic instructions lol...

I'm not familiar with SuSE really, but here's something to try..

Open a console, get root permission, and type 'alsaconf' and follow the instructions.

If that worked, then now type 'alsamixer'.
With any luck, your alsa mixer panel will appear. Check the mixer settings present to make sure any devices present are not muted (MM) and that volume levels are not set to zero.
Use the arrow keys and spacebar to accomplish this.
When done, press escape to exit.
Type 'alsactl store' to save the settings.
Now, using KDE Control Panel or whatever you use to test the sound system, set the sound system to 'auto-detect' and save/restart the sound system, and test it.

Hope this helped

Thanks for your reply

I have already tried alsaconfig... it didn't find any soundcards in its scan, and so alsamixer won't run

What is the nature of the kernel-module errors you get?
I am wondering if the driver stuff you tried to install has corrupted the modules.
Perhaps recompiling your original kernel modules would help.

That sounds like it would probably do the trick... the error is thus:

"An error occurred during the installation of [rediculously long device name]. The kernal module snd-hda-intel for sound support could not be loaded."

If I need to recompile the kernel.. how do I do that?