BARTICLE

Here I thought I had my problems with the sound card worked out. That is, it seemed to be working ok with Mandrake 10.1. Then I upgraded to Limited Edition 2005. The sound worked even better - I finally got the system bell to ring. Then I downloaded and installed the bug fixes & upgrades. Now there's no sound at all. I have tried changing sound drivers. Alsamixer doesn't seem to be there. The Kmix icon keeps saying "muted" even though "Mute" is not checked. I don't have a clue where to go from here, unless it's installing a new sound card. Any suggestions?

When I go to "configure hardware," I find two sound drivers listed - a default and an alternate. I tried both. I'm using the sound chip built into the motherboard. I assume that when I upgraded from Mandrake 10.1 to Limited Edition the kernel was upgraded, but I could be wrong. I'm wondering about using a PCI sound card, just so I could be certain what driver to use?

Problem: Although I have several programs for playing music or audio CDs, they don't work. My sound card works fine. But when I try to look at the files in a music CD using Konqueror, it looks like an empty CD drive. When I pop a CD into the drive, KSCD starts automatically, but then generates an error message. I'm using Mandrake 10.1 with KDE. Anybody know what the matter could be???

Well, Crusader, your suggestion led me to discover how to play a music cd, just not exactly the way you suggest. The cd is already mounted - the shortcut icon leads to /mnt/cdrom. I have no problem accessing the cd rom, or examining data files. When I right-click on the icon, "mount" is not one of the options. However, another option is Actions/Open with Kaffeine. I tried that; the cd immediately began playing. The reason I had not tried Kaffeine previously was that it doesn't appear in the Multimedia list of programs. Several others do, including Amarok, Kmid and Rosegarden, but none of those seem to work. Okay, for the time being I am happy without trying to figure this out. As long as it works.

Question: In all my user manuals & help files, I can't find any reference in how to run defrag in Linux. Is this because Linux files don't get fragmented like Windows files - or what? Sorry if this is a dumb question.

Thanks for that clarification. I have no reason to think my Linux partition is fragmented, just that I like preventive maintenance. One more reason to jump out of the Windows into Linux.

How do I stop getting "Access Denied" messages when I try to change anything? I have been attempting to change my wallpaper by pasting a jpeg file into /usr/share/wallpapers/. I keep getting "Access Denied, can not write to directory." I tried signing in as root, changing to security level 1, changing permissions. Result: OS crashed, I have to do another complete re-install. I had a similar problem when I was trying to add a new printer driver. Any suggestions?

danleff, Thanks for your suggestion. It didn't quite work - I kept getting a "not enough arguments" message. However, after some trial and error I evolved to the following Konsole command: chmod ugoa+rw 777 usr/share/wallpapers. Even with that, I got a strange error message, "No such directory as 777." However, it still worked & I am finally able to write to my file. Thanks again.

I'm using Mandrake 10.1 with KDE. I have downloaded all the updates & bug fixes.

I'm using Mandrake 10.1. How can I change the default settings in Alsamixer? If I want to activate my sound chip, I have to run Alsamixer and manually turn on every setting. Clicking on "Save as default setting" has no effect. Next time I boot up, I have to run the program & manually turn everything on again. Any ideas?

OK, I pressed Esc and typed in /usr/sbin/alsactl store. It had no effect. No error messages, it just didn't work. When I re-boot I still have to go back & turn everything on again. Am I missing something??

How can I re-name shortcut icons in KDE? I'm using Mandrake 10.1. If I click on "re-name", then type in a different name, it seems to work ok. But next time I boot up, the name reverts to default. This is a problem because when I set up a shortcut, the default name is usually too long & takes up too much space on the desktop. Any tips?

OK, I'll give that a try. I did try changing the default name in Properties, but I keep getting "Access Denied," even after changing to permissions level 1.

Kooka Canon, Inc. CanoScan N670U/N676U/LiDE 20 That's the default name for my scanner shortcut. It takes up a lot of space. If I change the default name in Properties, won't that mis-direct the shortcut?

Thanks. I'm signed in as Root, but I was exiting by clicking on "Quit" or on the X. I'll try your suggestion.

danleff, My sound card is still working. However, since downloading the updates & bug fixes I have discovered I can no longer access alsamixer. When I type in "alsamixer" as root user in Konsole, I keep getting "no such directory or file." The file is still there, in /usr/bin. But it won't do anything. Any reason you know of?

Chinkchink, I had the same problem after I first installed Mandrake. I had the screen size, res & refresh rate all set up correctly in Configuration - Only problem was, the screen never changed. Finally, out of desperation, I ran the Install disk again and selected "Update." This time the screen changed to the values I had already plugged in. I don't know why no one could have told me about this in the first place.

Well, my sound chip is now working, but I'm not sure why. Mandrake said there were two possible drivers I could use - I had tried both of them with no result. Yesterday I downloaded all the bug fixes & updates. Once again I tried the alternate sound driver (not the default). Now it's working fine, at least with the audio programs I've tried so far. I can only guess this is the result of one of the bug fixes, but anyhow I'm happy. Now if I could only get the Lexmark printer to work... 8)

OK, I tried alsamixer - I set all the bars up into the green zones. Kmix is set at 100% volume. None of my audio programs do anything. I tried playing a music CD with KsCD - the program says the first track is playing, but there's no sound. Anything else I can try??

Thanks, Danleff, I will try that. My cpu is an AMD Sempron 2800. The chip is on-board a VIA KM400A. I don't know if this is related, but when I try to start Rosegarden it starts initializing but never opens. There are no error messages.

I am having a similar problem with a different sound chip. I have a VIA AC97. According to Mandrake diagnostics, it's installed correctly. I get no error messages - just no sound. I am wondering if Mandrake may have automatically installed a wrong audio driver?

Hi. I am using Mandrake 10.1. I can not seem to change the screen resolution. I went to the control panel and reconfigured for a res of 640X800, with refresh rate of 60. Unfortunately, there's a little program called Screen Size and Rotate that starts automatically with KDE. The res in that program still says 1280X1024, with refresh rate 77. There's supposed to be a drop-down menu to change the res & refresh rate, but there's only one choice. My screen res is so high I can barely read the fonts. Any ideas?

I am completely baffled when it comes to downloading. I have recently installed Mandrake. I downloaded Firefox. I can easily locate the downloaded file - Firefox-installer. What do I do now? How do I get the file to install? I previously tried Fedora, but finally gave up because I could never figure out how to download and install software. I was hoping Mandrake might be easier?

OK - I got as far as running the Firefox installer. This time I stumbled over what directory to install it to. I tried installing it to Desktop, because I knew at least I could find it there. Now there's a Firefox icon on my desktop. When I click on it, it opens Konqueror, with a url pointing to the Firefox directory. Can you recommend any Mandrake manual with easy-to-comprehend instuctions? Thanks.

Thanks. I will try that. Unfortunately, I seem to have found another bug. (I'm running Mandrake 10.1, btw) I just booted up and discovered my mouse seems to have gone bonkers. I will try re-booting. One prob at a time.