Had the sound card working then it quit. Reinstalled FC2 and did all the updates. This machine has the latest ALSA and GNOME and KDE, Xorg and everything else. Still the following error message appears at login under root or normal user: "Sound server informational message: Error while initializing the sound driver: device: default can't be opened for playback (No such device) The sound server will continue, using the null output device." KDE Kmix crashes upon launch with the following message: "Short description: The application KMix (kmix) crashed and caused the signal 8 (SIGFPE). What is this? An application mostly receives the SIGFPE signal due to a bug in the application. The application was asked to save its documents. This backtrace appears to be useless. This is probably because your packages are built in a way which prevents creating of proper backtraces, or the stack frame was seriously corrupted in the crash." Hardware detection shows the sound card to be "Sound Card detected at ES1371 [AudioPCI-97], Manufacturer: Ensoniq; Driver: snd-ens1371" Dell support site reports the following original configuration for this machine and I have not changed out the sound card: "088GF CARD (CIRCUIT), MULTI-MEDIA, AUDIO, CT5807, PCI64, FRONT AUDIO JACK" As the sound card has worked before, perhaps it's something simple. One possible hint from the KDE Info Center for the Sound section, is that Audio, Synth and Mixer devices are "NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG." Also, Info Center reports "Ensoniq AudioPCI ENS1371 at 0xdf00, irq9." If it is a matter of editing a .conf file somewhere, I would need exact file location and exact syntax for the edit. I have not made any configuration changes from the standard install except to set KDE as my default desktop. Thanks for any help. Mark

What happens if you try to load the kernel module by hand, ie: # modprobe es1371 Can you see it listed if you do a: $ lsmod

3Dave: Here is the result of lsmod on my machine: [root@localhost root]# lsmod Module Size Used by snd_pcm_oss 43129 0 snd_mixer_oss 14017 1 snd_pcm_oss snd_ens1371 24869 0 snd_ac97_codec 58821 1 snd_ens1371 gameport 4033 1 snd_ens1371 usb_storage 58121 0 parport_pc 21249 1 lp 9133 0 parport 35977 2 parport_pc,lp autofs4 20677 0 rfcomm 31709 0 l2cap 21061 5 rfcomm bluetooth 40645 4 rfcomm,l2cap sunrpc 141861 1 tulip 40929 0 ipt_REJECT 5057 1 ipt_state 1857 7 ip_conntrack 25569 1 ipt_state iptable_filter 2369 1 ip_tables 13889 3 ipt_REJECT,ipt_state,iptable_filter floppy 54001 0 sg 28513 0 microcode 5601 0 vfat 12481 1 fat 39393 1 vfat dm_mod 47317 0 snd_usb_audio 61345 0 snd_rawmidi 21733 2 snd_ens1371,snd_usb_audio snd_seq_device 6473 1 snd_rawmidi snd_pcm 83529 3 snd_pcm_oss,snd_ens1371,snd_usb_audio snd_page_alloc 8393 1 snd_pcm snd_timer 25413 1 snd_pcm snd 45477 9 snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_ens1371,snd_ac97_codec,snd_usb_audio,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm,snd_timer soundcore 7713 1 snd uhci_hcd 28505 0 button 4825 0 battery 7117 0 asus_acpi 9177 0 ac 3533 0 md5 3905 1 ipv6 217349 12 ext3 96937 2 jbd 66521 1 ext3 aic7xxx 146841 0 sd_mod 17473 0 scsi_mod 105360 4 usb_storage,sg,aic7xxx,sd_mod

3Dave: Results of modprobe: [root@localhost root]# modprobe es1371 FATAL: Module es1371 not found. [root@localhost root]# Also, another bit of information that might point to a cause/solution is when any user, root or normal, logs in, the following box labeled "Informational - artsmessage" appears with the following: "Sound sever informational message: Error while initializing the sound driver: device: default can't be opened for playback (No such device) The sound server will continue, using the null output device."

More info about the system: [root@localhost root]# modinfo soundcore description: Core sound module author: Alan Cox license: GPL alias: char-major-14-* vermagic: 2.6.8-1.521 686 REGPARM 4KSTACKS gcc-3.3 depends: [root@localhost root]#

More info: [root@localhost root]# sndconfig bash: sndconfig: command not found [root@localhost root]# locate sndconfig /etc/setuptool.d/99sndconfig [root@localhost root]# /etc/setuptool.d/99sndconfig bash: /etc/setuptool.d/99sndconfig: Permission denied [root@localhost root]#

Also there is no /etc/modules.conf file. Should I create one and what should I put in it?