Thinkpads Forum

I have recently had my sound go out on my X60 Tablet. I have a dual boot setup with Windows XP and Gentoo Linux. I hardly ever use Windows XP on the machine as I am almost always in Linux. A couple of days ago my sound seems to have gone out for no apparent reason. I initially thought it was a software issue (and I guess it could still be), so the first thing I did to confirm this was to boot into Windows to see if the sound worked there (since no settings had been changed in Windows in months). I get no sound whatsoever. Music appears to be playing in both Windows and Linux and both OS's identify my sound card still. However, no sound comes out of the onboard speaker nor the line-out. Also, the microphone jack doesn't seem to work either for capturing. The only sound I can get from this machine now is the system beep (which shouldn't require the sound chip). My machine is 3 months out of warranty, and Lenovo wants ~$500 to replace the motherboard (if that is in fact what it is). Anyone have any suggestions of what might be the problem other than hardware? I'm willing to entertain any suggestions at this point. Thanks in advance.

I got a USB sound card for a similar situation that supported a 5.1 setup. I rather like the thing even though I never ended up needing it. You might want to look into it, since it's cheaper than the mobo.