Sound working before but not anymore

[drama]

Thank you for the suggestion. Adding acpi=off to the kernel line in menu.lst worked for me even tough it's strange that the bug was IO-APIC related and not ACPI. I'd like to know if adding acpi=off actually makes a difference on things I can do or cannot do in Ultimate with that option added. Thanks again for the solution, I really appreciate it

when you boot it says "mp-bios bug io-apic timer not connected" correct? i get the same thing. always have for as long as i can remember (im on a desktop). while it is annoying to have to see it on every boot ive never really tried to fix it. doesnt seem to cause any problems though.

as far as removing alsa screwing things up. thats my mistake i forgot to mention a few things. the way i do it is open synaptic. search for "alsa" remove everything that has alsa in the name. it will also remove some other packages as they depend on some of the alsa packages. i always make note of every thing that it wants to remove. after its done with the removal i reinstall EVERY package it just removed then reboot. its very possible that it removed something very important along with alsa and you didnt reinstall it. that would be my guess anyway. your right though it is very sad that they wont fix something just because it doesnt effect the majority of people. its not a ubuntu issue though its the alsa devs since this happens with every distro ive used.

[Epic]

Yea, that's exactly the message I was getting before. After I added the acpi=off option to the kernel line in /boot/grub/menu.lst the message went away. Now I'm not annoyed anymore Even though with that "bug" before; it didn't seem to cause any problems, but I still didn't like getting that message. When I showed my friends Ultimate and how it's so much better than Windows, that small bug message was getting into my nerves because people would see it and ask me what is that all about? (and maybe in their minds conclude that Linux is not so good after all) which is a dumb thing to say. I try to explain to them that machines people usually buy come with the label "Designed for Windows XP" which basically means it will work with Windows XP out of the box with no tweaking and no bugs regarding hardware.

[Epic]

as far as removing alsa screwing things up. thats my mistake i forgot to mention a few things. the way i do it is open synaptic. search for "alsa" remove everything that has alsa in the name. it will also remove some other packages as they depend on some of the alsa packages. i always make note of every thing that it wants to remove. after its done with the removal i reinstall EVERY package it just removed then reboot. its very possible that it removed something very important along with alsa and you didnt reinstall it. that would be my guess anyway. your right though it is very sad that they wont fix something just because it doesnt effect the majority of people. its not a ubuntu issue though its the alsa devs since this happens with every distro ive used.

Is there a way to avoid getting alsa screwed up and having to remove it and reinstall it again?

[drama]

Is there a way to avoid getting alsa screwed up and having to remove it and reinstall it again?

not that ive discovered. some people just get fed up with it and switch from auto detect (auto always tries to use alsa) to using oss or one of the other sound systems. in this case device would also need to be changed to oss. it seems to work for most people however its not a solution for me since i use jack and alot of audio production apps so i have to use alsa in those cases. i do assume there are more people that have this prob than have been reported though (they just use another sound system). i did find a few interesting posts though that may work. im gonna try them next time mine screws up. it appears to be pointing that the permissions get screwed up (idk how thats possible though).

sudo vim /etc/group

change

audio:x:29:

to

audio:x:29:tim

replace tim with your username

reboot.

it appears to have worked for quite a few people but i have my doubts.

[Epic]

sudo vim /etc/group
change
audio:x:29:
to
audio:x:29:tim
replace tim with your username
reboot.
it appears to have worked for quite a few people but i have my doubts.

Thanks for the solution. For now my sound works since I reinstalled Ultimate from scratch, but I'll have that in mind for the future if it happens again.