First, just so you know, I am aware this seems to be a recurring problem. I have been searching the forums for advice on this question, have tried several of the suggestions, and have not had a bit of luck.

After struggling with this for the last four hours, I've decided just to leave a question in the hopes someone can offer some advice.

I upgraded my SuSE 9.2 installation earlier this evening to 10.0, and when I did so, my SB 5.1 Live card no longer functioned. It shows up in YaST as it always has. When starting KMix, no mixer appears to be functioning. The sound mixer icon in the system tray had a red X on it. For various reasons, I decided to do a fresh install, so I wiped everything and started from scratch. Upon first boot, the sound card dectected, and everything worked fine.

Later, while tweaking things and playing around with apps I hadn't used before, I started the KRadio program. This generated several errors. I closed the program, and when I did so, I realized my volume control icon had disappeared. I opened Kmix. No mixers were available. The icon came back, but with a red X again. I checked YaST. The soundcard is there as before.

Using advice from here, I opened a terminal and rand alsaconf. This resulted in my sound system starting and playing the demo sound. However, no applications started under KDE would produce sound. In YaST, my sound section now shows 2 sound cards, one my SB Live, the other the same card SB 5.1 Live digital, which I do not have. When I try to edit the configured SB 5.1 Live card, the window with this option closes. When I try to configure the "digital" entry, it fails with an "encountered error" message.

And, of course, I still have no sound. When I reboot, the problems remains, and I don't hear the slight pop I would hear before indicating my sound system had started.

I do not know much at all about the sound system, where the configurations are stored, what files control things, etc. I never had a problem with it with SuSE 9.2 or 9.3, and I never had the opportunity to fix anything manually. So, I don't know what to check to start trying to find the source of the issue. Any advice at all would be greatly appreciated.

As a follow-up, could someone simply help educate me on what files (and in what directory they are located) control the sound functions, i.e. what files include the information of what sound drivers are loaded, which mixer controls the sound, etc.?