When I was dialing up to the internet I stopped playing music(paused it) to see if it was making sound then I pressed play and it froze (cant move mouse,totally nothing!)! I then restarted then connected to the internet but didn't play music at all and it worked fine... untill I started xmms and played music (complete freeze!) Then I restarted and then did internet stuff disconnected and then played music....and it worked!!!! It freezes when iI use an media player or when I enable sound server

any ideas?
I got a smart link 561 PCI modem
NForce 2 audio codec interface sound card

I know this won't help you but I'm having similar problem with my vaio laptop. Having recently installed Red Hat 9 on it whenever I try to play a sound the system has a total lockout and the only way back is to push the big red button. I'm not too worried about sound (although it would be nice) but the other problem comes when I try to switch desktop environments from GNOME to KDE. As the KDE environment is booting the same lockout occurs before login. All very frustrating as I can't get back to the working!! environment. I have searched around the forums and tried all sorts of things, ALSA, ACPI but being a Linux Virgin as yet the same problem persists...Any ideas anyone?

yeah but dawg, does yours happen as soon as you iniatialize your SMlink driver? I already emailed them about this problem If I find a solution ill tell ya....Aint gettin any help from forumz