Linux Mint Forums

I've reported that my sound was bombing out when I plugged in myexternal USB Hard Drive. Well, i bought abrand new drive today. 320 gig Western digital Passport drive. I plugged it in and the sound bombed. I rebooted, plugged in the cable only and the sound bombed. Is there a static charge or some such thing causing this? and, how can I restart the sound without having to reboot? is ther a quick waytorestart sound...maybe some other control panel or something? TTryingt ostart sound thorugh the system panel does not work.Restarting through Konsole does not work.

That's weird ok and indicates bad hardware - not that it's breakin apart but that it's a bad design.
Somehow the extra capacitance or inductance from the cable disturbs the motherboard enough for the sound to flip out. I'm not quite sure you will ever get sound with the cable connected should restart alsa (obviously)
To restart pulse audio I have not found anything except log out and back in or reboot...

Thanks very much. I just make sure to touch the end of the USB cable to something metal to take off any static charge...I'm just grabbin at straws here, but so far it appears to be working.

So you mean that if you discharge the cable you have both sound and USB disk?
Well well...