Sound trouble (continuous white noise) after recent upgrade

Question

After upgrading my 18.04 LTS yesterday (20200209), my right speaker is emitting white noise only, at highest volume, ignoring the volume control, except for when I mute sound. Left speaker is fine. Laptop is 3.5 years old, so might be a hardware problem; but the coincidence with the upgrade is curious. HP EliteBook.

uli@skriabin:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/E3-1500 v5/6th Gen Core Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers (rev 08)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Skylake GT2 [HD Graphics 520] (rev 07)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP USB 3.0 xHCI Controller (rev 21)
00:14.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Thermal subsystem (rev 21)
00:15.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Serial IO I2C Controller #0 (rev 21)
00:15.1 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Serial IO I2C Controller #1 (rev 21)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP CSME HECI #1 (rev 21)
00:16.3 Serial controller: Intel Corporation Device 9d3d (rev 21)
00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 21)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Device 9d13 (rev f1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP LPC Controller (rev 21)
00:1f.2 Memory controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PMC (rev 21)
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio (rev 21)
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SMBus (rev 21)
00:1f.6 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection I219-LM (rev 21)
01:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 8260 (rev 3a)

Update: After several reboots, I now have no more sound at all, and my audio device has disappeared from the lspci output. So it probably was a hardware problem after all.

Answer 1

You can try to use other operating system on a "live cd" to check if there a damage exists on your "Sound Card" phisically. If your wifi works correctly on the "Live Cd", try to verify if an official driver exists for your operating system.
Or try:

• the option "purge" for your driver
• unistall your driver
• update using sudo apt-get update, sudo "apt-get upgrade, sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
• after that, fix dependencies if an issue still exists trying sudo apt autoremove, sudo apt install -f, sudo apt autoclean, sudo apt clean, sudo apt update -fix-missing and reinstall the driver.

Don't forget to clean the temporally files before reinstall the driver (you can use apps like bleachbit).

If you are using alsa driver you can try using the commands: "apt autoremove alsa*", "apt purge alsa*","apt autoremove alsa-base", "apt purge pulseaudio", after that, clean the temporally files using "Bleachbit", try fix the dependencies and broken packages:"sudo apt autoremove", "sudo apt install -f", "sudo apt autoclean", "sudo apt clean", "sudo apt update -fix-missing", reinstall every package using:"apt install alsa*","apt install alsa-base", "apt install pulseaudio" and must shutdown completly your computer and turn on it to reload updating every configuration. I suggest try it. or verify the next link. "Sound card shown as Dummy Output in Ubuntu 18.04", Regards