[linux-audio-user] system plays cdrom, put not audio files

Asus A7N8X motherboard on-board sound circuit. nForce2 AC97 Audio Controler Slackware 10 kernel 2.4.26 ALSA KDE Control sound system is set to autodetect The sound worked 2 days ago, but then, bang! Won't play audio files no more. Somebody ( not me! ) must have goofed up somewhere. ( Well, maybe me, I don't know ) The cdrom plays audio CDs Ok with KDE KsCD player so I know something is working right. But the nForce2 AC97 sound mixer must have AUX set high. The Master Volume and PCM on the mixer have no effect on cd-rom volume. But no programs play audio files, including the usual KDE system sounds the mouse used to make. I have checked all the /dev devices and they all look good. The correct driver ( snd-intel8x0) is loaded. When KDE starts it gives an error message: "Sound server Error while initializing the sound driver device fault can't be opened for playback ( no such device) The sound server will continue, using the null open device." /usr/bin/audacity in KDE gives this warning when starting up: "There was an error initializing the audio I/O layer. You will not be able to play or record audio." Try to play a loaded file and audacity says: "Error while opening sound device. Please check the output device settings and project sample rate." The Gnome Wave Cleaner is also silent and hangs when I press the play button. The Sox play comamnd is silent. I have tried all kinds of changes to /etc/modules.conf to the ALSA settings and used the alsaconf command a few times too, but my knowledge is limited and nothing good happens. This is my /etc/modules.conf # --- BEGIN: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. --- # --- ALSACONF verion 1.0.5 --- alias char-major-116 snd alias char-major-14 soundcore alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0 alias sound-slot-0 snd-intel8x0 # --- END: Generated by ALSACONF, do not edit. --- These are my loaded modules ( lsmod ) Module Size Used by Not tainted snd-seq-midi 3488 0 (autoclean) (unused) snd-seq-midi-event 3264 0 (autoclean) [snd-seq-midi] snd-seq 33424 0 (autoclean) [snd-seq-midi snd-seq-midi-event] snd-pcm-oss 37736 0 snd-mixer-oss 12504 0 [snd-pcm-oss] usb-ohci 19240 0 (unused) ehci-hcd 17580 0 (unused) usbcore 59308 1 [usb-ohci ehci-hcd] forcedeth 9164 1 snd-intel8x0 18924 0 gameport 1420 0 [snd-intel8x0] snd-pcm 56072 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-intel8x0] snd-timer 13604 0 [snd-seq snd-pcm] snd-page-alloc 6328 0 [snd-intel8x0 snd-pcm] snd-ac97-codec 49500 0 [snd-intel8x0] snd-mpu401-uart 3200 0 [snd-intel8x0] snd-rawmidi 12740 0 [snd-seq-midi snd-mpu401-uart] snd-seq-device 3888 0 [snd-seq-midi snd-seq snd-rawmidi] snd 30852 0 [snd-seq-midi snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-pcm-oss s$ soundcore 3396 4 [snd] ide-scsi 9328 0 agpgart 43940 0 (unused) One day it works great, the next day its crap. I don't know what happened. Anybody got any ideas?