Weird sound problem

[Amano]

I installed Suse 10.0 today; the system sounds were working but video and audio players produced no sound. I installed smart package manager and downloaded the latest versions of audio packages (lib-xine, arts, alsa firmware) to try and get the sound working; the versions that are installed on my system currently are below:

Amarok 1.44-107
Amarok-xine 1.44-107
libxine1 1.1.3-0.pm.0
libxine1-arts 1.1.3-0.pm.0
arts 1.4.2-5.2

A few things that might help:

1) I originally had Amarok 1.3.8-14.3 installed, and when I tried to configure the engines, several were listed in the drop-down menu (arts, xine and helix) but none of them produced sound when loaded. Once I upgraded Amarok though, no engines were listed anymore (xine has reappeared, but the others are still missing, not that any of them worked anyway, but it implies something got borked).

2) I then updated the alsa firmware; after it completed succesfully, things got more messed up then before. In Yast, I now have two sound cards with the same name listed, and I no longer have any sound at all (even system sounds don't work anymore). BTW, the sound cards are listed as follows in Yast:

Audigy 2 Value [SB0400], which is supposedly configured
SB0400 Audigy2 Value, which is not

If I try to edit the settings of the "configured" card, the window just closes, and if I try to setup the unconfigured one, I get "The kernel module snd-emu10k1 for sound support could not be loaded." I can't delete the cards either.

3) I ran alsaconf and alsamixer, but the test sound doesn't play and basically, though I don't get any error messages and alsaconf seems to be doing something, I still have no sound.

4) I renamed sound in etc/modprobe.d to sound.bak and restarted -- no good.

I'm not sure were to go from here, but the thing is, this IS a driver/update/version problem; I managed to get sound on everything last week on a another installation of Suse 10.0 (I reinstalled the OS several times due to a borked hard drive), but only once, and I don't remember what I did. I'm trying to remember my thinking process that day, but so far, no luck....Basically what I'm trying to say is that it has something to do with the related package versions or their types or something; if I can get the order of installation correct or install the right packages, it'll work. I'm running out of packages to try out though, and that still won't solve the double sound card problem (which I've never seen before), which might be related, I don't know.

[Amano]

I just noticed something else: when I go into the KDE control center and choose alsa as the system sound output driver, the system crashes after I try to test the sound. Apparently, arts is the problem (according to the error message).

I've tried upgrading arts and alsa to the most current version, but no dice (i.e. no sound) and the sound system still crashes when I try to load alsa in the control center...WTF...It's almost as if the system is stuck using arts and won't change to alsa even if you tell it to...

I know all the changes I've made are confusing and hard to put into a larger picture; I'm just trying to provide as much info as possible.