Sound stops working

[DarkSlayer54]

first off... im a complete moron when it comes to Linux. Please treat me like a moron and talk very very slow.

Iv been trying to fix this for a few days now, and the stress has been building up. I have searched for hours on end trying to fix my sound, and If i can't fix it soon ill have to spend another few hours going back to Windows XP even though i wiped my harddrive for Linux Ubuntu 9.1.

My issue is, that my sound changes from what it should be, to a dummy stereo output sound. Which i dont know how to fix. I'd be incredibly happy if someone could give me a link to a tutorial for dummys, or just some help on how to fix it.

[scathefire]

what kind of sound card is it? if you can give us details, we try to be a tad more accomdating.

[DarkSlayer54]

heres what comes up at the very bottom of termial when i type lspci -v

Audio device: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT1708/A [Azalia HDAC] (VIA High Definition Audio Controller) (rev 10)
Subsystem: ASRock Incorporation Device 0888
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
Memory at ff5fc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

I hope that gives enough info... i dont know any other way of finding out.

[FewClues]

My issue is, that my sound changes from what it should be, to a dummy stereo output sound. Which i dont know how to fix. I'd be incredibly happy if someone could give me a link to a tutorial for dummys, or just some help on how to fix it.

Could you explain just a bit about "dummy stereo output sound." Is it a a/c humm or a muffled sound or...

You can see by the questions we are all a bit moron tonight.

[DarkSlayer54]

when it switches to the "dummy stereo output" the sound just stops working completely.

[DarkSlayer54]

so, will i have to switch back to Windows?

EDIT: any help would be fine.

[aleix]

I started having this problem when I installed Ubuntu Intrepid (8.10), and I didn't find a solution about this, but a simple

alsa force-reload

make it work again everytime you have this problem.

[DarkSlayer54]

it didn't work. I get this when i type it in.

mkdir: cannot create directory `/var/run/alsa': Permission denied
/sbin/alsa: Warning: Failed to create /var/run/alsa/.
/sbin/alsa: Warning: Not keeping list of removed modules because /var/run/alsa is absent.
It will not be possible automatically to reload these modules.
Unloading ALSA sound driver modules:/sbin/alsa: 219: cannot create /var/run/alsa/modules-removed: Directory nonexistent
snd-hda-codec-realtek snd-wavefront snd-cs4236 snd-wss-lib snd-opl3-lib snd-hda-intel snd-hda-codec snd-hwdep snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-pcm snd-seq-dummy snd-seq-oss snd-mpu401 snd-mpu401-uart snd-seq-midi snd-rawmidi snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-timer snd-seq-device snd-page-alloc.
mkdir: cannot create directory `/var/run/alsa': Permission denied
Loading ALSA sound driver modules: (none to reload).

Thanks for the help anyway.

[aleix]

You need to be root.

Try:

sudo alsa force-reload

[DarkSlayer54]

seemed to work.
Not 100% sure, but ill just say its solved. Thanks for taking your time to help me.

[solved]