From what I remember from f8 and looking it should use the alsa drivers. I have the following;
rpm -qa |grep alsa
alsa-lib-1.0.16-3.fc9.i386
alsa-lib-devel-1.0.16-3.fc9.i386
alsa-utils-1.0.16-2.fc9.i386
bluez-utils-alsa-3.30-2.fc9.i386
alsa-plugins-pulseaudio-1.0.16-4.fc9.i386

Under system->pref->hardware->sound
I tried all under sound playback/test. I get the test popup but no sound at all.

Any ideas/help is appreciated

Two things to do, post the output of the commands '/sbin/lspci' this will tell us what hardware you have for sound; and post the results of the command '/sbin/lsmod | grep snd' That will tell us if you have any sound modules loaded. All commands are without the quotes, typed in a terminal. Cut and paste the results to the thread.

Next, open up a mixer, make sure you are not muted, and turn up the volume. Try to play a .wav file, not something like an mp3 file. mp3's need codecs installed, and won't play without them. A wav file will play if the hardware and modules are loaded, and the volume is up high enough.

Post back the results and we'll go from there.

Cliff, thanks. The only audio that shows in lcpci is;

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)

/sbin/lsmod | grep snd
snd_hda_intel 330144 4
snd_seq_dummy 6660 0
snd_seq_oss 30364 0
snd_seq_midi_event 9600 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 48448 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device 10124 3 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss 42496 0
snd_mixer_oss 16768 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 67076 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer 21640 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc 11400 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
snd_hwdep 10500 1 snd_hda_intel
snd 48312 18 snd_hda_intel,snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd _timer,snd_hwdep
soundcore 9288 1 snd

Tried playing some basic wav's from /usr/share/sounds and nothing. As I remember back there was a command line alsa app you had to run for f8 but that was months ago (as long as my mind can still remember)!

Well I knew it was something easy!

A right click on the volume control, preferences, and you need to add the surround sound as by default it's muted and the dell has 2 audio jacks so I guess it uses surround.

Simply unmuted that, sounds works perfect.

Down to 2 more issues.... Thanks again cliff.

Glad you got it working.