Quick and dirty, worth a try.
Try this.  Actually I have to do it every time I boot lately because i 
haven't gone into really fixing the underlying whatever. 

alsaconf

just keep hitting enter and try again.  if it works, then, well,,




Jonathon Jongsma wrote:

>a few days ago, sound stopped working on my laptop.  I'm starting to
>suspect that it's a hardware problem, but since I'm not an expert when
>it comes to hardware, I'm not sure how to go about proving whether
>it's a software or hardware issue.  Can anybody give me any pointers
>on where to start looking?  If it were a desktop, I'd just try
>swapping in a new sound card, but I'm not sure what to do on a laptop.
>
>The basic symptom is that the music player acts like it's playing
>stuff, but no sound comes out, either from the built-in speakers or
>the headphone jack.
>
>Does anybody know of a definitive way to prove whether it's a hardware
>or software issue?  By the way, I'm running Ubuntu Dapper on a HP
>zv6000 series laptop.
>
>Thanks,
>Jonathon
>
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