I have now tried Ubuntu gusty and since I had probs with mobility radeon I downgraded to edgy but the problem with sound stays the same.

I assume that the laptop has internal loudspeakers, however, I can't hear anything. If I plug in headphones to the jack I can here very silent sound but that's all.

For lspci I get:

00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)

so the soundcard is recognised and so on - I have been playing around with volume controls setting everything to max but still no joy. Any bright ideas?

Forget about the question - it might be a good idea to have a look on the hardware first, apparently there's a small volume dial on the side and the most peculiar reaction to turning it, is the sound that goes up