trying to get Xubuntu working on an old machine (Inspiron 530). I've tried everything and have poured hours into this, but still nothing. The main takeaways:

alsamixer output:

mum@mum-desktop:~/Desktop$ alsamixer

cannot open mixer: No such file or directory

I've tried reinstalling everything from the mixer package to the alsa-base package. I've installed and uninstalled as many drivers as I could find. I've edited config files.

What's weird is that the sound was working when Vista was on this machine just a few days ago, and it worked on Xubuntu for 1 night after I managed to somehow open alsamixer, and now alsamixer doesn't work and there's no sound again. At my wit's end.

The only command that seems to recognize the sound card at all is lspci -v | grep -A7 -i "audio":

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)

    Subsystem: Dell Inspiron 530

    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 3

    Memory at fdff4000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]

    Capabilities: <access denied>

    Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel



00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])

mum@mum-desktop:~/Desktop$ 

aplay especially doesn't find it:

mum@mum-desktop:~/Desktop$ aplay -l

aplay: device_list:270: no soundcards found...

I think the chipset's sound card model is stack6-dell. I forget which conf file it is but I tried adding the "options" line at the end of it to add the model name. Still nothing. PulseAudio only shows dummy audio.

I'd really like to try and avoid buying a Windows 10 license because it's such an old machine. Any help is appreciated. Thank you!