As the subject says, my Armada 1750 laptop with snd-es18xx sound card plays music fine in Amarok (stock slack 12) after a reboot from win2k, but doesn't if I boot directly into slackware.

If I boot directly into slackware, I only get choppy/loopy/skippy sounds from Amarok, but this same file plays with no problem in Audacious.

Also, if I use the hardware volume controls while playing in Amarok, the music will loop to a different part of the file.

So could anyone help me diagnose the problem, and point me in the right direction for fixing it? Things I think that should work are:

use the sb module
use only Audacious

but it smells of taking the easy way out.

Also: what could be keeping resident that would make it work after a reboot from windows? is it a hardware/BIOS problem? (using latest BIOS already, from 2000 )

PS. the computer has ACPI turned off because it doesn't work with linux.

i guess the driver has problems initialising the card. you could either request help at the alsa-user mailing list (search for your problem at their wiki/bug tracker/mailing list archive) or try the drivers from opensound.com (which would involve compiling a custom kernel)

thanks for the suggestion, didn't even think of asking there...

I found this a while back. Maybe it will help. It worked with my Armada 1750. I can't post the link but I want to make sure you read it, so
just google for "fushlberber"
There is some other fixes that he describes as well.