SOLVED:Soundcard just stopped being detected by snd_ctl_open

[alloydog]

For some reason, my sound card now refuses to work!

I had just set up Skype, made a test call, which worked. Then after a reboot, I saw the line initial boot script:

alsactl load_state:1134 no soundcard found

lsmod shows all the modules have been loaded OK:

snd_pcm_oss 49064 0
snd_pcm 84000 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_page_alloc 12552 1 snd_pcm
snd_timer 24836 1 snd_pcm
snd_mixer_oss 18688 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd 47588 4 snd_pcm_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_mixer_oss
soundcore 11232 1 snd

and dmesg also shows the soundcard has been found:

isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
pnp: SB audio device quirk - increasing port range
pnp: AWE32 quirk - adding two ports
isapnp: Card 'Creative SB AWE64 PnP'
isapnp: 1 Plug & Play card detected total

It worked fine before I started testing which modules I could hash out of /etc/modules and briefly afterwards as well - I reinstated the original modules file, but no joy.

When I run alsamixergui I get the message "alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device" - whereas before, I got the alsamixer controls GUI.

[alloydog]

After all the searching through forums and the home pages of alsa and oss, I found many really scary (well, for me that is) possible solutions invloving make-ing & config-ing and even kernel compiling

Then I found this at LinuxQuestions

It was really simple - I just needed to add snd-sbawe to the modules file.

But why it worked before, I don't know.