Hello to the board. First post and all that ..

Ok, be gentle as I am a newbie who's just come over from XP. Basically, I have been battling (and failing) to get my 5.1 sound up and running. I am running a dual boot and it's fine in Windows (which I am looking to ditch, once this problem is sorted).

some info:
Audio Codec CMI976IA
Kernal :2.6.11.4-21.9-default
Motherboard: P4VM800

linux:/home/darrendowlut # /sbin/lspci
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 0314
0000:00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 1314
0000:00:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 2314
0000:00:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 3208
0000:00:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 4314
0000:00:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 7314
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 PCI Bridge
0000:00:0f.0 RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80)
0000:00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
0000:00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
0000:00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
0000:00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1
Controller (rev 81)
0000:00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
0000:00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)
0000:00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [KT600/K8T800 South]
0000:00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)
0000:00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 78)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 3344 (rev 01)

I have tried running alsaconf and everything seems fine, sound card detected. However, when i run alsamixer as root I have two entries for 'surround': the first says '00' and doesn't allow me to turn up the bar. the second just gives me an option to toggle between 'shared' and 'independent'.

I have also played via YAST and again it says 'VIA 8237 running'.

PLEASE HELP!! I am at my wits end here.

(Apologies is the fix is something really stupid).