Lost audio in Mint 14 Cinnamon, Thinkpad T530

[bassamie]

So the sound in youtube and movies was working fine yesterday; today it is not.

Under PCI Devices in System Information, I find this Audio device : Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)

Everything looks the same in sound settings as it did yesterday; I know this because I have been exploring alot these past few days. I've made sure that everything is "ON" and loud enough.

Here is the strange thing: when I login, I hear the startup sound! Also, sound never worked on the live CD but it worked fine upon initially installing mint 14 Cinnamon(which was 2 days ago). And it was also working after i did all the updates in Update manager

Help.

Thanks!

System:
Thinkpad T530 with Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon
(and win7 on a seperate HDD, the sound works fine there so I know it's not the hardware)

[bassamie]

UPDATE: So I gave up and booted into win7 and found that the mute light on my keyboard came on and that sound was muted. I do remember having muted win7 before shutdown earlier.

I'm surprised that the muted sound setting survived a reboot and was still there in mint. And yes I tried many times pressing the mute button earlier to get sound back in mint.

EDIT: So music/sound was working in Mint at this point.

[bassamie]

So I resume from suspend today and the audio is not working.

So resuming after suspend causes no audio and sometimes even after a reboot there is no audio.

[bassamie]

So I know more now.

Audio started working fine yesterday everywhere by itself. I say this because I did try some 'fixes' thanks to some help on the irc channels and upon reboot the problem was still there.

My audio does work via headphones. Speakers are intermittent I should say; they work one fifth of the time.

Apparently this is a common problem in linux itself.

Can anyone help?

Thanks!

[AlbertP]

On many computers you can manually choose between headphone output and normal output in Sound in the menu, on the Output tab. On my previous motherboard with a VIA sound codec, it automatically switched between these options when plugging/unplugging the headset, but it also allowed setting this manually (edit: my laptop with Realtek sound has this too, so probably it'll be just the same on your laptop; you also have a Realtek sound codec).

[bassamie]

Is there a less obvious way to change this setting.

In Sound, Ouput tab, I have the speakers profile selected. Youtube is playing in the background, I can hear nothing. I plug the headphones in and I can hear youtube, also the profile changes to Headphones. I unplug the headphones, audio is now gone and the profile has changed to speakers.

What shall I do?

Thanks!

[bassamie]

The problem persists.

I've run alsamixer, made sure everything is ok.

I've followed this ubuntu debugging guide with no luck. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingSoundProblems

What is a n00b to do here with Mint? Is it time to give and switch distros? This is a genuine question.

Am I not trying hard enough? I find it disheartening that I've had only 1 comment on this thread and this is a problem that I experienced on day 2; the future looks bleak.

[lotofag]

After 8 days trifling with linux I can tell you. There is a reason why linux has so many distros. These people all want to chip in. Because the more useless the system the better chance of Bill Gates being satisfied. They are all his agents, mind you. I tried four distros in the meantime, the mint being one of the stable ones, nevertheless, I reinstalled it three times in one week. Once it seems like working for a longer period of time the rule of thumb is, do not change anything in the system. That being said the sound in youtube is pretty volatile, it is governed by flashplayer that seems to have a mind of its own. Be glad that you had any audio at all . The movies are easy, you can manually change the desired audio device in the preferences of each player. If it is not listed, maybe your comp just spat it like mine because of overheating done by linux and permanent rebooting. Try to rebbot and pray that there is some life left in the system when it comes back. It teaches you one think that does. You start to enjoy the little things. Like hey, the desktop appeared. Hey, the resolution is the same as I left it. And hey, it fits my monitor . Unless you are a nerd that comes after a week of no sunlight in the street with that winning smirk that he managed to compile his very own and very customized linux system through the console and it works like charm

[bassamie]

So I went to alsamixer and disabled auto mute and my problem is solved!

[deltree]

So I went to alsamixer and disabled auto mute and my problem is solved!

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!

I consider myself fairly capable at Linux troubleshooting, but this intermittent issue had haunted me ever since I switched from Ubuntu to Mint a few weeks ago. It was only a problem about half the time I woke the computer from a suspend and a reboot almost always fixed it (until I suspended again) but that defeats the purpose of suspending

Then I saw this post where you basically troubleshot the problem all by yourself and found the solution. So, I ran alsamixer from terminal and saw that Auto-Mute Mode was in-fact Enabled

I Disabled it and my sound came back right away

Aloha from Hawaii for your diligent hard work!