Hi listers - I got pretty close a couple of times but was not able to drive my sound card under the 2.2.18 kernel. I followed Jim Dantly's suggestion and compiled the alsa software okay, specifying only my snd-card-emu10k1, but ended up with unresolved symbols and no modules loaded. I upgraded the alsa drivers to 0.5.10 as per Captain Kirk's suggestion and found that they compiled under 2.2.18 specifying 'all' cards, but that did not solve the unresolved symbols problem. Next I abandoned alsa and selected the built-in drivers for emu10k1 and that failed too... My brain hurts. I am having to choose now between sound and keeping current, and I choose sound. I have reinstalled 2.2.17 in which the alsa 0.5.10 upgrade works for me, which means - I am dropping to the rear of the crowd and will let others whack their shins on things. I sometimes think I am just plain getting too old for this! Chuck My web site is http://www.mhonline.net/~chuckh Real Users find the one combination of bizarre input values that shuts down the system for days.