[CentOS] CentOS 3 sound intermittently goes out

Fri Feb 3 02:08:04 UTC 2006
Bart Schaefer <barton.schaefer at gmail.com>

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?