[CentOS] No sound on HP 8540w, guidance requested

[Robert Heller]

At Sat, 07 May 2011 12:32:41 -0700 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:

> 
> At 09:28 AM 5/7/2011, you wrote:
> >On 07/05/11 16:22, David wrote:
> > > Dear Experts
> > >
> > > I have been unsuccessful getting the sound to work on a HP Mobile
> > > Workstation HP 8540w.
> > >
> > > Here's a brief rundown of where I am
> > >
> > > I did a clean new install of Centos 5.6 from DVD, using the Gnome
> > > Desktop option and no optional modules.
> > > I enabled the firewall, but disabled SELINUX.
> > >
> > > I installed three files from elrepo to make the wireless adaptor
> > > work, and specified the video adaptor using the Gnome ->  System ->
> > > Preferences ->  Display panel.
> > >
> >
> >Hi David,
> >
> >If you're already familiar with elrepo then I'd suggest you try their
> >updated alsa sound drivers.
> >
> >yum --enanlerepo=elrepo install kmod-alsa
> >
> >and reboot.
> >
> >Also, don't forget to check your sound device isn't muted. The ALSA docs
> >state:
> >
> >Note: All mixer channels are muted by default. You must use a native
> >        or OSS mixer program to unmute appropriate channels (for example a
> >        mixer from the alsa-utils package).
> 
> 
> I got two recommendations:
> a) Used 'alsamixer' to unmute all channels.  The were, as a responder 
> suggested, muted.
> b) Installed kmod-alsa from elrepo.  It produced a bunch of warnings 
> which I ignored.
> c) I performed lspci | grep -i audio, and got
> 
> 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 
> High Definition Audio (rev 06)
> 01:00.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation High Definition Audio 
> Controller (rev a1)
> got

OK, this looks like the same audio chipset I have in my desktop machine
-- the *stock* snd-hda-intel driver should work.  Also there seems to be
*two* audio chipsets (do you have a PCI sound card *in addition* to the
motherboard's audio chipset?  If so, then it is possible that your movie
player to talking to the soundchip that is not connected to any speakers!

It is also worth noting: many laptops have a set of volume and/or mute
buttons, either separate from the keyboard proper (my ThinkPad X31 does
-- labeled with a speaker with a down arrowhead, an up arrowhead, and a
speaker with a slash through it) or layered as 'Function' (Fn) keys on
the F* keys (activated by the special Fn key).  It is possible that you
need to push one of these to enable / unmute / turn up the volume...

> 
> No sound, and the mute button on the function display does nothing -- 
> it's a constant orange color.
> I am not sure where to go from here. 
> 
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>                        

-- 
Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933 / heller at deepsoft.com
Deepwoods Software        -- http://www.deepsoft.com/
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