I'm running CentOS 3.6. The hardware is an Intel D865GBF motherboard, but I also have a generic soundblaster-compatible PCI card installed, because back when I installed CentOS 3.1 I had problems getting the onboard sound to work.
The PCI sound card worked fine until about the time I installed CentOS 3.5. Since then, however, it has failed intermittently. Once it fails, it's generally out for several days, then might come back for a while, then go out again. Lately it's off more than it's on. The state following a reboot or power cycle is unpredictable; usually there's no sound after reboot, but sometimes that revives it.
I've tried changing configurations, including fiddling with alsa as suggested in a some postings on this list, and starting up and exiting from various different sound apps, etc. None of it seems to make any difference; when the sound comes back on, it's for no reason that I can discern.
Does anyone have any ideas how to diagnose/fix this? Could the card itself be going bad, and if so how can I tell?