I have a problem that there is no sound in Kubuntu (or any other distro that I have tried)

My sound is Intel ICH6 on a packard bell easynote a8202 notebook.

I have checked alsamixer and nothing is muted.

I have seen a few examples of the same problem which suggest the solution is upgrading alsa and/or the kernel but the latest versions of both are installed!

I have no idea what to do next to get my sound working.

Can anyone help??

After some more searching I have read on a website that this is a possible solution as it is believed the problem is a conflict between the modem and sound device...

# The problem with the audio seems to be due to a conflict between the modem module (snd_intel8x0m) and the snd_intel8x0 module. One possible solution is:
# mv /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/sound/pci/snd-intel8x0m.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/sound/pci/snd-intel8x0m.ko.original

The problem is I dont know what this means. Looks like something that is to be typed into a terminal, but I don't know what it does or if I can type the whole thing in "as is"

can someone translate this for me please?

well switched back to breezy and done as it says above (figured it out, can't believe it. All that to rename a file!)

still no sound though. If I play with alsamixer mute, unmute, etc I can hear the "thuds" through the speakers, which seems to me the sound device is loaded and working, but still there is no sound.

this is the output of lspci

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. Mobile Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
0000:00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corp. Mobile Graphics Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corp. Mobile Graphics Controller (rev 03)0000:00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 04)
0000:00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 04)
0000:00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 04)
0000:00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 04)
0000:00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 04)
0000:00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 04)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801 PCI Bridge (rev d4)
0000:00:1e.2 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 04)
0000:00:1e.3 Modem: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 04)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 04)
0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller (rev 04)
0000:00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 04)
0000:06:01.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments: Unknown device 8031
0000:06:01.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments: Unknown device 8032
0000:06:01.3 Unknown mass storage controller: Texas Instruments: Unknown device 8033
0000:06:03.0 Network controller: Intel Corp. PRO/Wireless 2200BG (rev 05)
0000:06:08.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)

just followed instructions here

http://system76.com/knowledge/index...._Ubuntu_Breezy

but at the end alsaconf didn't detect my sound device all I got was

james@ubuntu-easynote:~/alsa$ sudo alsaconf
Terminating processes: 7690.
Unloading ALSA sound driver modules: snd-intel8x0 snd-ac97-codec snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-pcm snd-timer snd-page-alloc (failed: modules still loaded: snd-intel8x0 snd-ac97-codec snd-pcm snd-timer snd-page-alloc).
Building card database...
modinfo: could not find module snd-opl3sa2
modinfo: could not find module snd-cs4236
modinfo: could not find module snd-cs4232
modinfo: could not find module snd-cs4231
modinfo: could not find module snd-es18xx
modinfo: could not find module snd-es1688
modinfo: could not find module snd-sb16
modinfo: could not find module snd-sb8

after reboot get this when run alsaconf

james@ubuntu-easynote:~$ sudo alsaconf
Password:
Unloading ALSA sound driver modules: (none loaded).
Building card database...
modinfo: could not find module snd-opl3sa2
modinfo: could not find module snd-cs4236
modinfo: could not find module snd-cs4232
modinfo: could not find module snd-cs4231
modinfo: could not find module snd-es18xx
modinfo: could not find module snd-es1688
modinfo: could not find module snd-sb16
modinfo: could not find module snd-sb8


so doesn't fail to unload modules anymore coz there aren't any loaded but I'm still getting "no pnp or pci devices detected"

do I want to probe legacy, or something. I select yes it finds nothing and exits

also downloaded the latest alsa-base, no luck there either.

Not so good to see Linux STILL having these problems with these basic essential devices! I suppose thats why 95% still uses windows...

too many conflicting stories for this one. One says conflict with modem, no joy with workarounds for that one.

Another says buggy ac97 codec with no real solution. I can see the point of this because my system does say "unknown codec"

This is so annoying, everything else works perfectly and this is the only thing stopping me turning to Linux full time.

Any solutions or advice either way would be appreciated

just noticed something very strange, around the headphone and mic ports on the notebook was getting very hot, but when I unchecked iec958 in switches in audiomixer and muted the master volume it has gone cool again. I am not happy that if I hadn't noticed this it may have damaged my sound circuitry!

I never imagined that installing Linux on this notebook could trash it!

Now THATS incompatibility at it's worst.

I'm beginning to think that Linux is going to be a complete waste of my time, which is a shame because the rest of it was appealing