Absolute Newbie - Loaded Ubuntu 4.10 from CD , sound of drums played briefly then no sounds from any devices,played once no sound at subsequent reboots
Cmptr home built - Asrock k7vm4 M/B with sound on board (AC 97) disabled in BIOS
Aopen Cobra AW-850 deluxe soundcard 5.1 Ch PCI Audio ( In windows XP shows as C-Media)
Athlon2600+ 1 gig Ram 120 gig HD Dual Boot with Windows XP on separate 40 gig partitions with auto formatting and partitioning on "D" drive partition for Ubuntu via CD installation
NVidia GeForce 440 64Mb Video Card (on board M/B video disabled in Bios)
DV2000 Digital video capture card - actually uses a lead from the "line-out" connex.to the " line-in"on the sound card ( quirk of the DV card )
1 x 16X cd/dvd rom , 1x DVD burner , 1 x FDD
Once we are up and running in Ubuntu all the "programs work" ( well I think they do as my linux experience is less than 1 day)... with the exception of any sounds being produced. the DVD/ROM's will not play any sounds or videos either. All indications are that they seem to be playing but not a squeak out of the speakers. The mixer appears on screen when brought up, nothing is muted and
everything works in windows xp. Hoping a linux guru can point me in the right direction
Rgds Mookie2125

so after first boot you heard the sound after logging into your ubuntu system, and since that one time you havent heard any other sounds? there must be something you edited or changed after that to result in this, right?

maybe try upgrading 'alsa' (which is like a universal sound card driver for linux).
to do this:
look for a program called 'synaptic' (which is a 'package manager'.. it could be compared to M$' 'add/remove programs'), it is under the menu at the top i think 3rd from the left (if your using gnome, most likely), i forget the name of the menu.. but from there you select administration -> synaptic. youll be prompted for a password once ran.
once in the program i think theres a 'reload' button which will look online for new packages or upgrades that are now available, click that first.
there should be a button to search through the 'packages', and search for 'alsa'. if you dont have the latest version (there should be a table that lists your version and the latest version) then upgrade and test it with an mp3 or something, or reboot to hear the login sound.
if this doesnt help, then look on google or yahoo for 'linux driver [insert sound card name]' or something along those lines.. hopefully youll be able to find out. if so, it will almost certainly have instructions on how to install it. if you cant figure it out or none of the above helps, let us know, hopefully after testing afew things (and double checking the volumes are up, mute IS off, cables connected, and everything is how it should be!) then let us know.

Hi Nadroj
Sorry it's taken so long to get back to you.
1 All cabling is OK
2 Used Synaptic - It updated alsa and 8 other items as part of updating alsa
3 Rebooted - initial sound of druma again at log in screen then nothing
3 Tried "music player" - no Joy
4 May have something here ... even though box is marked Aopen Cobra AW 850-deluxe
the actual single chip on the sound card is a C-Media 8738 chip
5 went C-media side and found driver and patch - downloaded these.
This was accompanying documentation (as copied and pasted)
Linux V 6.44

FILE01
03/08/2005 21KB 　
FILE02
FILE03
　

1. The driver gets thinner by moving legacy device support to other drivers.

2. Remove many driver parameters from kernel config menu, they can be set easily with module options.

3. Verify spdif/multi-channel capability among chip versions. 8338 has multi-channel back.

4. Can work with kernel 2.6 with a patch file 46.diff.

Now for the challenge...
How to get the the downloaded files into the correct file folders/directories
AND will it work??

theres a post here @ lq.org for someone else having the same audio card, and solving his problem.. however he was using a different distro (slackware).
hope this helps, try it

edit: just found this one, too.

after reading that 2nd link.. its pretty hardcore, especially if you are new to linux. i believe it involves uninstalling all of your current alsa programs, downloading the source [code] for them all again, and following the 'quick install' instructions (from link #2) to install it.. hopefully the 1st link fixes your problem with just afew clicks.

Hi Guys
Thanks for all your help.
I have bookmarked the sites etc just in case
SUCCESS!!! I now have sound .
Must confess when i checked all files/folders etc everything was there
no system errors.
i went back to the volume control mixer panel
and continued to scroll along unchecking every box
I came to ... as you first suggested... the box that prevented the sound
was " IEC 958 In-Monitor "
The volume control mixer displayed also has 2 options along the top
[C-Media PCI OSS Mixer] and [C-Media PCI 8738 {Alsa Mixer}]
Both selections will work as long as " IEC 958 In-Monitor " is "unchecked"
Hope this prevents some other newbie being caught out
The old "KISS" principle applies once again
Thanks and Rgds