When I installed Mepis I kept my original sound system setup, basically two powered, portable computer speakers. I actually installed it (Mepis) a while ago and I just now realized none of my speakers were working. I know that may sound retarded but I don't use my computer for a lot of media, mainly distribution of songs onto my ipod, the net, and some games. I only realized when I installed an emulator that none of the sounds were playing. I unplugged the speakers and they work well with my windows laptop and my stereo so i know they're working fine. I am using the sound card on the motherboard via the i/o ports and I think the brand of the sound card is either VIA or AVIA. I've checked KInfoCenter and it recognizes the sound card, but I can't configure it in the system settings. Has anyone had this problem or does anyone know a solution?

Kinfocenter will give you information but not allow you to make changes.

Try the Control Center - Sound and Multimedia.

I did; that's what I meant by it recognizes the sound card in Kinfocenter but not in system settings.

It could be that you don't have the required driver loaded. Do you have the hwinfo utility installed?

If so, from a console, 'hwinfo --sound' without quotes should identify the sound card, and tell you which driver is needed.

lsmod will show you if it's loaded or not. Modprobe <driver name> will load it. It's probably something like driver snd-intel8x0. lsmod should also show a module called soundcore, as well as several which begin with 'snd' in the name.

ok i did that and it says it recognizes the card and its driver. could it be it recognizes it but isn't telling the sound program to look in the right place?