Thanks Fingers99.....I was monkeying around with it last night and did get it to work finally. But I noticed an error or two. There is a command, the name of it i forgot, but you go to console and type in the command to bring up a file of all that text that scrolls by real fast on monitor when you boot up LINUX. I noticed there are 2 references to my soundcard and to another related sound option that comes up at the very end as errors. I will bring it into work tomorrow and copy and paste it here on the forum to see if anyone can help with it. My cd player seems to be working ok with the cd player program. Volume is a good loud level now. The only thing i noticed was the music didnt seem to be in stereo! But it could be that I have a crappy audio plug on speakers and it might be not fully mated. And I noticed that if i put a picture cd in the cdrom and click on the cdrom icon, it gives a error in a small box in middle of screen. I did have it working before so i will mess with it some more tonite. Anyway it seems that mounting & unmounting the cdrom is important! I have to get used to this!.....ok...bob