LinuxQuestions.org - snd_hda_intel driving me insane

Please, for the sweet love of Zombie Jeebus, help me.

I have two machines using an ASUS M2NPV-VM motherboard, both running Slackware Linux 11.0. One machine is my home file+web server and MythTV backend (with 2.0 speakers). The other machine is my HTPC frontend and dual-boots to XP and Linux. That machine now has 5.1 speakers that work great in

It's a great motherboard and Linux works well on both, except for the sound. I can compile snd_hda_intel and it *kind of* works. If you touch the alsamixer volume, occasionally the sound dies. Or sometimes the sound doesn't come up at boot. Or, sometimes, if you mute and unmute the sound in alsamixer on the 5.1 speakers, 5 of the 6 speakers start working. Or sometimes if you rerun alsaconf and alsamixer it starts working again, but often it doesn't. Mostly, sound doesn't work and it's frustrating.

I've read around for various solutions, and decided to attempt to upgrade my alsa-driver to 1.0.13. However when I attempt to modprobe snd_hda_intel, I get the following error:

FATAL: Error inserting snd_hda_intel (/lib/modules/2.6.18.2/kernel/sound/pci/hda/snd-hda-intel.ko): Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)

If I run dmesg, I get get errors of the type:

snd_hda_intel: Unknown symbol snd_verbose_printk
snd_hda_intel: Unknown symbol snd_verbose_printd
snd_hda_intel: Unknown symbol snd_hidden_kzalloc
snd_hda_intel: Unknown symbol snd_hidden_kcalloc
snd_hda_intel: Unknown symbol snd_hidden_kfree

using depmod on snd_hda_intel actually appears to delete the snd_hda_intel drivers!

I've seen other posts mention "Unknown symbol", only to have the original poster come back and say they've "fixed the problem" with no further data. I can get things somewhat back to normal by recompiling my kernel snd_hda_intel drivers using make modules_install from my kernel directory.

This is driving me nuts. Getting sound working on my HTPC and MythBackend is the one thing holding me back from using my mythfrontend properly.

Does anyone have any suggestions, or links to threads with concrete solutions? I appreciate the help.

Trevor Bradley
Surrey, B.C., Canada