First off, I'm running SuSE with a 82801DB AC'97 Audio Controller.

Problem: I will open up YaST, then go to Hardware, and then Sound. It will go through this little configuration type thing, then it will come up w/ an error thats says:
"The number of currently running cards doesn't match the number of configured cards in your configuration files. Try to restart sound systems?
YES NO"

I will hit yes, then it will bring me to a page titled "sound configuration." It lists my card, "82801DB AC'97 Audio Controller", but under the "state" tab, it says "Not Running".

When I click on the volume tab, entitled "volume settings for 'nil'," it shows nothing, no slider bars...NOTHING.

===I BELIEVE THIS PART IS VERY IMPORTANT, BUT I'M NOT SURE====

when i go to KAMiX, it gives me an error saying:

"No soundcard available or sound support not configured yet. However, the application uses or requires sound support
CONTINUE ABORT"

both continue or abort do nothing.....

No ideas?

Hi f34th3r,
It's late, I'm tired, maybe I can't help: but hate to see you there waiting in vain for an answer.
I have never seen a message such as the one you report ("The number of currently running cards doesn't match the number of configured cards in your configuration files...")
But since you have the message, have you looked at those configuration files?
I am probably as newbie as you are, but here are some questions to ask about how completely things are set up on your system.

Have you chosen a sound system? E.g. Alsa, Oss.
Have you looked into the Suse control centre? -- not the actual Yast module, but the Sounds and Multimedia part that is just Suse-related -- and set something up.
Do you know what driver needs to be installed for your sound hardware?
Do you know whether the driver is in fact installed?
If you have chosen a sound system, is it configured? E.g. did you run alsaconf? (I don't know what to do about Oss.)
I have AC97 on my VIA motherboard and it made no sound until I saw on the alsa website that I needed to add some aliases in modules.conf. That got it going.
Tonight I added a SB Audigy sound card: it made no sound until I ran alsaconf (this is very easy -- just type alsaconf in command line and it will probe your system and make a config file with your soundcard's details).
The alsa mixer has many channels, you have to turn them all up before deciding that there is no sound.
Have you checked dmesg or any other system logs to see whether there is anything odd happening on boot? -- e.g. system probes hardware, finds some problem, logs a note about it.
Also, when you post a question like this, esp about on-board sound, it will probably help if you include some more hardware specs. It seems to me that a number of AC97 issues are very well known on LQ -- so with some more info about your system you might get a quick answer (or better than mine, anyway).

Have you tried running alsaconf, and then alsamixer? The first will attempt to configure your sound card, the second will adjust the various volume levels. Good luck with it -- J.W.

I ran into a similar problem before. It was awhile ago but if I remember correctly what
I did was to remove the sound device and add it back manually. You might try that
and make sure all the modules you need are loaded.

Zack

I've had my share of frustrations with that same sound hardware and SuSE 9.3. I finally realized that I was running YaST as me (normal user) instead of as root. I logged in as root, made sure any programs using sound were stopped, and went through the YaST sound config and it JFW'ed. Well, sort of. For some reason, after doing that, I can only see the xine plugin for amaroK. Before, I had xine, aRts, and gstreamer. Of course, before none of them worked. :-) I'll take one option that works over three that don't.