No sound in Debian 7 on EEEPC 1201n kernel 3.1
 

I am running debian 7.0 with linux kernel 3.1.0-1-486. I have alsa installed and pulseaudio. I run FVWM-crystal as my window manager. I get no sound in any application or from the system. Alsamixer is turned up, but nothing makes noise. Anybody know what I can do to fix or troubleshoot this?

Welcome to the forums! Why not give the currently supported Debian 3.2 kernel a try, maybe it has better support for your sound card?

I've upgraded to kernel 3.2. Still no sound. Alsa mixer just says "(default)" or "enter device name" under "Select sound card."

I did a quick Google search and it appears your EEE is significantly different hardware-wise than my 900ha. I think maybe yours has Nvidia graphics and audio; does that sound accurate? You can confirm this with the terminal command:

I am not an expert on Nvidia but I know Debian does not include these "non free" drivers by default. Hopefully one of our resident Nvidia-in-Debian experts will be along shortly to assist. You can read about Nvidia on the Debian wiki (but proceed with caution; perhaps better to wait for some guided assistance than to forge ahead):

http://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers

Apologies if my Nvidia guess is inaccurate.

lspci does seem to indicate that it is a "00:08.0 Audio Device: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 High Definition Audio (rev b1)"

So I did a full update, upgrade and dist-upgrade. Now I've realized that if I have an application running that should have sound, it still doesn't. However if I leave that app running (in FVWM on tty7) and go to another TTY (1-6 seem to work) I can hear the audio! It stops as soon as I go back to tty7 and will resume when I go to any other TTY. Any clues?

I solved the issue. All drivers were fine. I just needed to add my user to the audio group.