Sound stopped working

[phyzome]

Run your System76 driver (System > Administration > System76 Driver).
Then reboot your computer.

Even simpler: Spit over your left shoulder, turn clockwise three times, and reboot. It works for me... because rebooting solves the problem (temporarily) by itself. :-/

What is needed is a solid test-case that will cause the "muting". Then this sequence can be followed:

1. Execute proposed solution
2. Reboot
3. Run test-case
4. Check if "muting" has occurred

(This is not to say installing the System76 driver should not be the first step. I'm just noting that it might appear to "fix" the problem for some people temporarily, even though it's not the actual solution.)

[phyzome]

I've tried the following suggestions (in roughly this order):

• Check alsamixer settings
• Check Preferences -> Sound settings (Autodetect x 3 and PulseAudio)
• killall pulseaudio
• sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils restart
• Uninstall and reinstall flashplugin-nonfree
• Install System76 driver
• Reboot

To test these as a group, I have done the following:

• Play a YouTube video
• Play music in Rhythmbox
• Some combination of these in sequence
• Some combination of these in parallel

The test case I have worked out that will cause the muting (at least on my panp4i):

• Suspend and close laptop
• Open laptop (un-suspends)

I believe that rebooting after a suspend clears the problem.

I do not think that any of the suggestions I have tried so far have worked as well as a reboot.

[thomasaaron]

Pyhzome,

This thread had been hijacked pretty badly. The original problem, posted by Emily has long been solved. It was a modem program she installed that caused ALSA to fail. So uninstalling the program fixed her computer.

The problem you are describing sounds to me like it might be this...
https://bugs.launchpad.net/system76/+bug/264516

[smaddox]

My sound stopped working too.

There used to be about 6 sliders in the volume control now its down to just "pcm" and "master" both of which are up all the way and unmuted with no sound. (I checked Edit->Preferences thats all the controls available)

I tried OSS but there there's only *one* slider and it still doesn't work.

I did just do an update, but not a kernel update or anything related to sound, I don't think.

--Thomas Dunlap

Thanks for the tip. This worked for me. Sound stopped working randomly, but just cycling the mute button on my logitech keyboard got the sound working again. Note that before cycling the mute button, none of the indicators showed muted.