alsa problems

[ChaseB]

I did the hard drive install and got everything working except ALSA. That includes the Nvidia driver for my Geforce2 card, printing, ADSL connection, everything I tried. Boy was I impressed. Then I tried Ardour and quickly realized it wasn't going anywhere without ALSA. So I found the "/etc/init.d/alsa-autoconfig" command discussed here, tried it, and immediately lost X-windows. When it tried to get to KDM, it just flickered a few times and defaulted to the command line prompt. No message or hint as to what was wrong.
Well, I noticed that there was a new version of Knoppix out, with updates to ALSA. I also figured maybe I need to get ALSA working before I mess with the Nvidia drivers. So I started all over again. This time it didn't kill X, (I haven't tried the Nvidia driver yet), but it's still not working. When I try XMMS with the ALSA plugin selected, I get the standard "You've got the wrong plugin selected or Something's in the way of the soundcard or Soundcard is not properly configured" message.

My system:
Albatron KX400 with AMD XP 2100+ 512 DDR
Dual booting Windows XP and linux on one 40G Western Digital drive.
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card and onboard VIA sound system.
Nvidia Geforce2 AGP.

The onboard sound was enabled on install. I tried shutting it off afterward and it made no difference. I don't think Knoppix likes it. Seems like I saw an error message about it on install. Should I disable onboard sound and try the install again?

This isn't much to go on, I know, but I don't know enough to get meaningful error messages at this point. Any help would be appreciated.

--Chase

[ChaseB]

OK, then let me ask another question. Has anybody gotten ALSA to work in version 3.3? How about 3.2?