Hi, all. I've been dealing with this problem for some time and I've finally gotten tired enough of it to try to find a solution. The sound card on my laptop (Dell Inspiron 8200) is quite flaky. By flaky I mean that it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. The only way I've found to get it to work once it stops working is to reboot. Needless to say, that's a pain.
Anyway, it appears that the sound module is i810_audio. Is there a way to get the kernel to reload it or to make it release any locks that another program might have on the sound card?
-Brent
Brent,
It probably isn't a problem with your sound card or its drivers _exactly_ I run linux on an i8200 and have found that with the standard drivers (or at least the ones i use) two programs can't use the sound card at the same time (i have found ways around this but basically that is the case) so if you you are using KDE and it starts ARTSD then if something tries to access it through arts then it should work but anything else (most non kde apps that haven't been set up to use arts) will get locked out of /dev/dsp. If you are using KDE then i would suggest going into the control center, sound system, and un-checking Start aRts soundserver on kde startup. If you are using gnome then there is probably something similar. If that is not the problem then i would look at everything that's running and see if there is something that is taking over the sound.
Hope this helps.
-Chris Kosanovich
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