Hi, I had the same problems `Debian (Debian 6 Squeeze), my soundcard was working one moment and then on the next boot it just would not work, no matter what I tried, interestingly the Orca screen reader worked. I `Googled` (Googled) the solution and found this page, lucky for me Im a noob and was struggling to install the alsa drivers etc & work out what to do, however the other day when I booted my system `fsck` <fsck> was automatically forced to run by the system while booting (After 26 boots). When it had finnished and the login screen loaded I could tell that the sound was working again. And it is! Maybe you should try to force `fsck` <fsck> to see if this works.

Hi, I had the same problems `Debian 6 Squeeze), my soundcard was working one moment and then on the next boot it just would not work, no matter what I tried, interestingly the Orca screen reader worked. I `Googled` the solution and found this page, lucky for me Im a noob and was struggling to install the alsa drivers etc & work out what to do, however the other day when I booted my system `fsck` was automatically forced to run by the system while booting (After 26 boots). When it had finnished and the login screen loaded I could tell that the sound was working again. And it is! Maybe you should try to force `fsck` to see if this works.