Number one: My Firefox won't let me use my default profile anymore because it says it's 'in use'. I suspect this is because it didn't shut down properly last time, and so couldn't remove some sort of marker it placed for itself...
How do I remove the marker / get my default profile back?

Number two: My soundcard always starts up with everything muted, or at least, Gnome's mixer automatically mutes everything for me. Since I have a rather large soundcard (8 channels) it gets quite tedious going through and manually restoring everything to its proper volume. Is there a way of telling it to start off usuable?

Thanks

"firefox -p" should allow you to choose the profile you want to use.

1. There is probably a 'lock' file, in my system located in /home/peterh/.mozilla/firefox/h8moi0e9.default/
Delete it, then start firefox.
2. I did this: load 'aumix', set all levels as wanted, save. Make an executable script to run at boottime, containing one line:
aumix -L
This reads from your user's homedir, you can change that if you like with -f:
aumix -L -f /etc/mysettings

for your volume levels use alsamixer to set the volumes then type `alsactl store`to store the changes

Woohoo! Thankyou, all!

It works

Which of all suggestions worked?

Well, I restarted my box anyway, and that seemed to sort Firefox out of its own accord. (Still thanks to those people though.)

I don't have alsactl, but I could get aumix, so I'm using that method.

Thanks again!