Mysteriously disappearing sound
 

Hello everyone. I'm running Mandrake 9.1 on a ThinkPad 600, and after I installed it, I ran sndconfig, set up the io, irqs and dma's and everything else as IBM suggests on their website, and the sound worked beautifully! So why the post, well for some reason (and I can't figure out why since I don't think I've done anything differently) when I rebooted Linux yesterday, I got all sorts of errors when it tried to load the cs4232.o.gz module. Of course, my sound is now dead as can be. I've tried restarting various times and I get the same error messages, and my sound still doesn't work. I've also run sndconfig and tried switching the dma numbers (as IBM suggests you do occasionally), but still nothing. I even tried using a different driver, and then switched to the right one, but I'm still getting errors. Has anyone had this problem with their sound mysteriously disappearing? I would run tpctl, but I can't even compile the darn thinkpad drivers (I get strange errors when I run make). Anyway, any help would be greatly appreciated! I've been using Linux for about a year now, but I still feel quite a bit like a newbie! (I shouldn't complain though. At least my LAN, modem and video are working!)

Hey there.
I'm a Linux newbie myself, but I had this (almost) exact same problem with my Thinkpad770z laptop. After Googling around a bit, and posting some stuff at other forums, I got it right.

Not sure if this'll work, because of different laptops and all, but it's worth a try.

First, when your laptop boots, go into the BIOS by pressing F1 or delete.
Look around in the settings for the option "Quick boot." If it's there, turn it off.

Reboot and go into Mandrake.

Open up a shell, and get into root.

Run sndconfig --noprobe
(this runs sndconfig without trying to locate the sound card drivers by itself)

There's more than one driver that will work, but I've found that the CS drivers don't work very well. Instead, just use the old, tried and true Soundblaster driver.

Settings should be: I/O: 0x220 , IRQ: 5 , and DMA 1. If it passes the sound test, make sure all the mixer settings are right in Kmix, and load up your multimedia player of choice and try playing something. If it works, reboot, and see if it still plays anything. If not, try loading up sndconfig again, and look for drivers that can use the above settings. Hope this helps. =)
Send a reply with whatever happens.
-CC

Thanks for the answer. I think that might have worked, but I opted to try installing Slackware instead (not because of this issue, I just wanted to check it out). I'm having sound problems there too, but they appear to be more serious. Anyway, I started a new thread called ALSA Crashes!!! TP600 if you're interested. Thanks for the help, I may still try your ideas.