kernel upgrade broke my sound

[TauLepton]

I've searched and not found much that's relevant to my situation, so forgive me if I overlooked something obvious.
Here's my problem: I recently upgraded from the 2.6.12-r6 to 2.6.12-r9 gentoo kernels and now my sound doesn't work. ALSA and snd-intel8x0 (the driver for my integrated SiS soundcard) are loaded as modules. alsaconf recognizes my sound card will configure it without complaint. However, when I run /etc/init.d/alsasound restart, I get this:
* Caching service dependencies ... [ ok ]
* WARNING: you are stopping a boot service.
* Storing ALSA Mixer Levels ...
/usr/sbin/alsactl: save_state:1163: No soundcards found... [ !! ]
* Unloading ALSA ... [ ok ]
* Unloading ALSA modules ... [ ok ]
* Loading ALSA modules ...
* Loading: snd-card-0 ... [ ok ]
* ERROR: Failed to load necessary drivers [ ok ]
* Restoring Mixer Levels ... [ ok ]

my 2.6.12-r6 kernel, which I still have, supports my sound equipment perfectly. Oh, and if i do "cat /dev/urandom > /dev/dsp" I get static in my speakers, just like you're supposed to if the sound card is working right. Strange.

[sdousley]

how did u update the kernel? Completely make it again from scratch?

Not sure if this is how u did it, but the way i do it is to copy the ".config" file from the old kernel sources to the new. then check any changes, and compile.

[TauLepton]

Ummmm, yeah, that fixed it. Thanks. But why would my sound be broken when all the modules were loading correctly, I had run alsaconf, and /dev/dsp was set up and working? I feel like such a newbie.