Problem getting ALSA working on Dell Inspiron 4150

[Joe Emenaker <joe@emenaker.com>]

Here are the quick facts:

 1 - ALSA used to work. I don't know when it stopped working... if it 
was after a kernel upgrade or an upgrade in some of the alsa-tools or 
what. But now, I get no sound. I don't get any *errors*... I just don't 
get any sound.

 2 - Typical problem in this case is that the volumes are all muted. 
However, in this case, if I run "alsamixer", I get "function 
snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device".

 3 - /proc/alsa/cards contains "--- no soundcards ---".

 4 - OSS *does* work. (No, I don't want to use it because I can't get 
KDE and XMMS to use it at the same time)

 5 - 'lsmod' shows that the intel8x0 *is* loaded... as well as 
soundcore, and a lot of other things that lsmod claims intel8x0 uses.

Any ideas?

- Joe