Hi Again.

I have just installed Mandrake 10 Community on an HP pavillion 442.uk, and am having sound problems.

The machine only has a Toshiba DVD Rom (SDM1612). Software installed from CD using the DVD drive, but I get no sound with KSCD or XMMS if I put CDs in. DVDs give very poor, intermittent sound.

Please help.

I do not know your sound card model and brand. Type /sbin/lspci and post it here.

For audio CDs you have to either install cdda2wav or go to a electronic store like Radio Shack and buy CD-audio cable with a 4 pin molex connector.

cdd2wav is a utility to digital extract CD audio tracks to save them to a wav file or transfer them to the sound card. No CD audio cable needed because it use the IDE or SCSI cable.

Thanks again. The sound "card" appears to be one of these "on-board' devices, it's and nVidia nForce MCP Audio processing Unit. I've already tried installing their Linux driver, but to no avail. I'll try installing cdda2wav first.

Thanks again.

Dear All,

Tried installing cdda2wav. System said it had installed, but I can't find/run it. CDs still don't play.

I have tried installing Linux before, and it's always the same story - hardware won't work!

I will persevere this time, but not for much longer!!!

At the console type "find / -iname '*cdda2wav*' 2>/dev/null". It should come up with something.

The reason why LINUX does not run on your system very well because HP sets up their systems differently. They are always like this in the past.

In order for audio CDs to play you have to get your sound card working. I suggest buying Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. It works with out any problems. Unmute the the master, pcm, cd and adjust the volumes. Next load up xmms and select /mnt/cdrom, /dev/hdc, or something. You will then see the audio tracks. LINUX can not mount audio CDs because they do not have a real filesystem to go by.

Dear Electro,

Many thanks, but I think I'll just use something else to play CDs.

I agree that the HP machine seems to be set up to run Windows.

No, the OS that HP uses is a specialize version designed for HP computers and notebooks. If you want to still install LINUX, build a computer. You can get a top a line 32-bit Athlon for under 500 US dollars.