MEPIS Community Forum

Advent 7109A

Have tried installing both Windows XP(SP3) then M8.0 and sound on the laptop simply isn't there.

Drivers installed for XP from http://www.uniwill.com/UserDownload/l51ii/l51ii.php
without issue as reported by Device Manager.

Wiping HDD and installing M8.0, the sound doesn't work with the warning that "Mixer cannot be started"


Anyone any ideas. I suspect that there's a audio chip fault?

Might look to see if there's some kind of external on/off switch or volume control for sound.

Otherwise, I'd say it's borken.

edit

I did a little Googling. Seems the Fn keys control sound. Might try messing with them.

Fn+F1 - Sleep Mode
Fn+F3 - Mute all audio (including system and battery beep)
Fn+F4 - Toggle the display between LCD, CRT, LCD+CRT and TV
Fn+F5 - Increase volume
Fn+F6 - Decrease volume
Fn+F7 - Increase brightness
Fn+F8 - Decrease brightness
Fn+Num Lock - Enables the embedded keypad to work in numeric mode

Is there any particular reason for using such an old version of Mepis, or could it simply be that you prefer to stick with KDE3?

Debian Lenny is getting long in the tooth now and hardware support is miles behind any of the more recent releases, though it still should work reasonably well on most hardware produced prior to midway through 2008, which in theory should mean yours would work, but if you introduce the less common, or exotic hardware, the chances of support are diminished somewhat.

If you want to persevere with the older kit, you might get some mileage by looking for a more recent kernel that may work with the Lenny build and bundled GCC/XORG combination in the Debian archives, or you could try dropping in one of the kernels from a later version of Mepis, such as that from 8.5. Remember that if you break your system, you get to keep both pieces.

Mike P

In this instance, I'm simply trying to identify an audio problem on a a laptop - Advent 7109A

Its a family laptop and they've been using win XP.


Since I had to do a re-install and couldn't get the sound to work, I experimented by doing a live boot with M8.0 just to see if I got sound - sadly no.

Having gone back and messed around with XP some more and done repeated audion driver installs with no joy, I belive the audio chip has died.

If anyone can throw any suggestions my way to get the audio fired, please do.

I've done a BIOS update but the BIOS for the laptop does not have any options for integrated hardware control.

Sounds likely.

Have you checked in Device Manager whether the sound device has a yellow error flag? That would be confirmation.

run:



to find out what audio device your computer has. it may be dead as you suspect, but it could also be that you have a different audio systemt then you thought...

USB Audio device for a few bucks on ebay or whatever is available in your area sounds like the best option to me. Found one supplier in less than a few seconds, bz4deals with one at $US 11 with free shipping.

Mike P