How come my sound won't work on Lenovo ThinkPad x230?

Question

I have a Lenovo ThinkPad x230 that I just purchased and installed Ubuntu 12.10 on it. There is no sound, how do I fix it?

I checked that my volume is not muted. I also tried checking in alsamixer and it looks like it doesn't see my sound card.

Solution 1

On my X230 Tablet disabling "auto-mute" in alsa-mixer fixes the problem, that there is no sound after one sound was played. Try to plug in headphones and check if there is sound, then it could be the same problem.

Solution 2

If none of the above works try using

alsactl init

then play something.

Solution 3

I've had the same problem with a similar model thinkpad (x200t) but the solution was easier than I first thought.

I had found that I had pressed the mute button on the keyboard which despite what I tried to do using software wise would not work again until I pressed the the volume up/down key on the keyboard then the sound was back again.

So, I learnt that I can mute the sound using the hardware button, but cannot turn the sound back on again using the software mixer nor by pressing the mute button again. Only by using the hardware volume buttons on the keyboard.

Comments

[user530873]

I just installed the 3.6.2 kernel to see if it would help, and I had sound for like the first 15 seconds after boot, but after that the sound was gone (even after reboot)

[pevik]

In my case it helped to use pavucontrol (nor aumix neither alsamixer helped).

[user530873]

Thank you, disabling auto mute worked for me too. I'm not sure how to submit a bug, but this seems like one worth submitting.