hello all...

i have a dual boot system, windows xp and linux redhat 9
old linux distro, i know. but i have my reasons to stick with rh9, for now.
in general, i have been using windows more than my linux up until windows died on me..
so am now using linux exclusively, and forced to try to rectify the things that didnt work since i did the initial install.. which is really fun to do now that i know a little bit about the system... not enough, but am trying

so am having problems with sounds in browsers, both firefox and opera.w
after a fresh reboot, sound works perfectly.. but once i use a native application on the machine that uses sound, ex xine, xmms etc, the voice stops to work in my browser... even if i make sure that /dev/dsp is not in use by any application. restarting the browser or a simple logoff/login does not help
sound in browsers is back to normal after a full system reboot.

any thoughts on how to go about fixing this?

Wikipedia:
Seriously, it's time to try a newer distro. Linux things are much better than they were in 2004.
Welcome to LQ!

thanks for your feedback, and for the welcoming =)

although i am beginning to feel a little bit left behind :P

yes, i did the installation back in 2004. since then i tried several distros, fedora, mandrake/mandriva , several live based variants... they were not as stable or as good as rh9 at that time. so basically i kept going back to rh9

once settled, i made lots of nonstandard modification on it to accommodate a c/c++ project am working on... so basically i cant upgrade and lose a 5 years worth of tinkering
upgrading is definitely on the agenda, once am done.

as for this issue, i more inclined to think that all i need to do is to kill and restart a certain proccess but am not sure what that process is...

I cannot remember how things were done five years ago, and I have never used Redhat so unless someone else can help, I think you are on your own here.

i highly dought that the VERY VERY old web browser in RH9 will handle the new flash ( and sound) on the web as it is today
What version of firefox are you running ?
it probably is incompatible with the sound system in RH9 ( from 2004 )