[SOLVED] Sound card not detected by Kubuntu after hardware change

[devintheamateurdevin]

After changing my PC (but keeping the hard disk with Kubuntu on it) I noticed the sound stopped working in Kubuntu. My 2 speakers and headphones are not working. I looked into it and I believe the problem is that Kubuntu is not detecting my sound card for some reason. My pulseaudio shows no output devices besides Dummy Output, and the command sudo aplay -l gives me:

aplay: device_list:274: no soundcards found...

I tried a few things I read online. I've uninstalled and reinstalled pulseaudio but nothing happened. I used the command sudo modprobe snd-hda-intel, but that gives me

modprobe: FATAL: Module snd-hda-intel not found in directory /lib/modules/5.8.0-36-generic

I tried lspci | grep Audio and its output was

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GP107GL High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)

I tried lsmod | grep audio and it had no output. I have no idea what any of those commands do, they're from online.

I don't think there's a hardware or connection problem because when I boot windows on the same machine the sound works perfectly. I am definitely a new guy so any help is appreciated.

Here is information about my system and PC:

Kubuntu release: 20.04
Version of KDE: KDE plasma version 5.18.5
Grub version: grub-install (GRUB) 2.04-1ubuntu26.7
Operation systems installed: Windows 10 pro 64 bit, and Kubuntu

Type: Desktop
CPU Intel core i-7 4790 CPU @3.6 GHz (64 bit)
GPU NVIDIA GP107 [GeForce GTX 1050 Ti]
RAM: 8GB
HDs: 1 internal SDD with 250 GB where both systems are installed, 2 internal HDDs with 1 TB each.

If I didn't provide enough details let me know.

[MartinB105]

Kubuntu is currently broken; the 5.8.0-36 generic kernel is missing the sound drivers, so sound just won't work at all.

As a temporary work-around, I edited the command in grub to load 5.4.0-60-gerenic kernel instead, by pressing 'E' on the grub screen. I guess maybe there is a way to make this permanent, so you don't need to edit it on every boot, but I'm not sure how to do that yet (nothing in /etc/default/grub mentions the kernel version to load).

[jglen490]

Kernel:

inxi -S
System:    Host: john-HP-ENVY-x360-Convertible-15m-ed1xxx Kernel: 5.8.0-36-generic x86_64 
          bits: 64 Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.19.5 Distro: Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla)

Audio works just fine here. VLC is laying my tunes, TEAMS let me listen to (and watch) work meetings. So, yeah, works well.

[devintheamateurdevin]

So I fixed the problem thank to this thread. All I had to do was install the missing modules with the command:

sudo apt install linux-modules-extra-5.8.0-50-generic

Now the sound works with the latest version of the kernel so I don't have to load a different version every time. I'm kind of surprised such important modules are left out of the latest versions. Is there a reason for this?

Thank you MartinB105 for the advice. Without your help I would not have known what was wrong.

[jglen490]

Like so much else in the Linux landscape, "free" as in beer is hard to attain.