Sound works in browser but nowhere else
 

G'day Folks,

I'm running Kanotix 2.6.18-kanotix-1. Until recently my sound used to work "out of the box". Now it doesn't work with Kaffeine, etc anymore. When I do the sound system test with KDE's Control Centre, I don't hear any sound.

However, when I open Galeon and view a video from youtube, the sound works without any problems.

It seems that I'm missing something simple. Can someone point me in the righjt direction? What further info can I post to help solve the problem?

Thanks
Joe

When you say it worked 'until recently', what changed 'recently' that may have affected the sound?
If your sound system is trying to use the ALSA sound device, try this:
open a console as root, or use su to get root permissions.
Type 'alsamixer'
If the mixer appears, make sure any volume controls are not set to zero, and that any devices are not muted. If I recall, the arrow keys move left and right, M or spacebar mutes or unmutes. When done, press escape to exit.
If that worked so far, type 'alsactl save' to save the settings, and exit the console.
Now test the sound with the device set to 'auto detect'.
If alsamixer didn't work, type 'alsaconf' and follow the instructions.
Let us know if this helped, or if it is something else entirely.

Thanks very much for the reply.

The "until recently" was that I was out of the country for two weeks and when I returned the sound was gone. My wife and kids had access to the PC in that time :)

However, I am also having trouble with some of my hard disks and suspect that that may be the problem. I have just now switched the pc off, cleaned and reconnected the IDE cables, rebooted and, what do you know, the sound works...

Sorry for the false alarm.

Cheers
Joe

;) Gotta like them kindsa fixes!
Take care!