posted this in another forum, since have moved it to here

i'm running mint rosa 17.3 and my sound cut off. like i was listening to some youtube alan watts and then no more alan watts. i rebooted it there was no start up sound. and i imagine there's other things i'm not hearing. i tested the sound earlier and it was fine, but now i can't even click on it. haven't found any help searching this particular problem

if it helps speed up the investigation, my laptop is old and has taken years of the ole forced shutdown. the latest being earlier today. control alt print screen and then (with control alt still held down) reisub, has been my latest go to

godspeed

update;

after doing some stuff according to the mint forums, i no longer have any sound settings. is something called pulse audio something i should want? that's what's off the menu pull up. it says: Fatal Error: Unable to connect to PulseAudio: OK

thinking it's time for a new laptop

i also suspect my permissions need to be changed

an update: so i got sound in youtube now, but that's the only volume i'm able to control. sound, in system settings, there isn't much i can do. there's a big ole empty box under the header play sound thru. used to say i think hdmi speakers or something. dummy output is supposedly an option i can't access. i can't seem to even add the sound icon to the bottom panel

anyway, it's not that big of a deal. i tend to adapt to things like this. which come to think of it, is the reason i find myself in situations like this

i'm a big fan of this laptop though. had it since aught twelve and i haven't been the gentlest with it. i'll be getting another cheap asus