Ok to start out I want to thank all of the people who are active members in these forums and promoting the spread of linux. But after my 2 weeks of searching to try to fix my sound I was starting to give up but kept going and now .. it works thanks to the linux community support!
Im still a noob but ill post my findings.

For starters here is my audio card.
VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller

Now to list out commands people have been so kind to provide. I hope they help. Please if I list something and didnt write why this is being done please fill us in with more information on the command.

First you need to run:
alsaconf

This configures your sound card from a preloaded list of modules from alsa. Hopefully your sound card is there! Check to see if your sound card is compatable at http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/

Secondly run:
alsamixer

Obviously this sets your sound levels.


Thirdly run:
alsactl store

this will store your configured information

Ok this is the standard information that people give on most sound problems now for the permissions part. These you'll have to run as root.

make sure that rc.alsa is executable:
chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.alsa

chmod 755 /etc/rc.udev
chmod 755 /etc/rc.d/rc.hotplug
chmod 777 /dev/ds* /dev/sn* /dev/mix*

and edited fstab to:
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,user,ro 0 0

Lets say that I can mount data CDs (e.g. the Slack install disk) but I cannot play audio CDs.
Try this
1. Determine which device in /dev the /dev/cdrom symbolic link points to:

ls -l /dev/cdrom

In my case it was /dev/hdc

2. Change that device's group owner to 'cdrom'. For example, (as root):

chown root.cdrom /dev/hdc

Change '/dev/hdc' above to the device your /dev/cdrom symbolic link points to.
(thanks to lyle_s for this)


Ok ok now lets say you've done all of this and your getting sound from gaim and mozilla but CDs wont play. Well I learned that most modern computers are missing a cable between the cd-rom player and the soundcard.

THANK YOU SUPERSNAIL for this check his post out over at xmms forums http://forum.xmms.org/viewtopic.php?...ght=sound+ac97

Please help this post by adding to it. Post your sound problems here! Its such a pain to search through 20 different posts all saying the same thing.