Linux Mint Forums

Hi,

I've come back to this computer, running Gloria, after 2 weeks absence. On leaving it it had no problem. Nobody else has used it since. On turning on there is no sound - no signature sound, no music, no sound on Skype, nothing. Speaker is not muted. I have sound if I boot into Windows.

What should I be looking at to get my sound back?

Thanks.

I assume you checked your speaker wires and power.

Did you do any updates that might influence that or use a different kernel, maybe without all the necessary modules? I had been playing around with different Linux distros before hitting Mint and when I updated Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10, I lost sound when I booted to the alternate old kernel, but it returned when I booted the new kernel.

One thing that inadvertently knocked out X sound was changing the hostname of mint by just changing /etc/hostname. I thought all I had to do for that to take effect was reboot, but it did not dawn on me immediately why I lost sound, because I still had the little sound before login. X uses network sockets and I also had to make sure that hostnames matched in /etc/hosts. Then sound in X started working again.

Hi efflandt

efflandt wrote:I assume you checked your speaker wires and power.

It's a laptop so no wires. Power OK.

efflandt wrote:Did you do any updates that might influence that or use a different kernel, maybe without all the necessary modules? I had been playing around with different Linux distros before hitting Mint and when I updated Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10, I lost sound when I booted to the alternate old kernel, but it returned when I booted the new kernel.

No updates since have noticed problem. Don't really know what a kernel is(!)

efflandt wrote:One thing that inadvertently knocked out X sound was changing the hostname of mint by just changing /etc/hostname. I thought all I had to do for that to take effect was reboot, but it did not dawn on me immediately why I lost sound, because I still had the little sound before login. X uses network sockets and I also had to make sure that hostnames matched in /etc/hosts. Then sound in X started working again.

Don't know what "X" is. Haven't changed hostname or tampered with the etc directory.

Is there a way I can get sound back by restoring Mint, and if so, how do I do it?

Again thanks.

Solved by referring to the "comprehensive Sound Problem Solutions Guide" at:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=205449/

In my case typing "alsamixer" in a terminal I saw that all my audio channels except "Master" were muted. Unmuting them solved the problem.