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I have a Dell inspiron 15 3542 and i could never get HDMI working properly and a few days ago I finally got it working after installing intel drivers. All was working fine until today my tv wouldn't produce any sound and HDMI wasn't an option under sound settings. I found a thread with somewhat similar issues and while trying to deal with my impatient family I ran the commands that were suggested before seeing the small comment under it stating it caused even more problems. The commands I ran can be found at the bottom of here: HDMI is not displayed in the "Sound" settings on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

The only one i didn't do was sudo apt-get dist-upgrade because I wanted to stay on 14.04LTS and wasn't sure what that command would put me on. Now I still don't have HDMI audio out but now I also don't have half of my system settings. appearance, sound, etc...

How can I fix this without losing my data? I am relatively new to linux and I could really use some help! I'm now forced to boot windows for working HDMI audio...

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Oggie7797
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  • Did you boot your laptop with the adapter connected? BTW, running sudo apt-get dist-upgrade won't take you to the next version (14.10), please feel free to upgrade it to get some essential updates. – P.-H. Lin Dec 24 '14 at 02:41
  • No charger wasn't plugged in. And okay i wasn't sure if it would bump me up to 14.1 or not – Oggie7797 Dec 24 '14 at 02:42

2 Answers2

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There is a known issue about this kind of HDMI audio detection issue when the laptop is booted without the charger. The power saving stuff sometimes make the detection not working.

One easy way to verify this is to forcibly (harmless, don't worry) play a sound with command-line commands, assign the output to the HDMI port even if it's not in your sound settings.

First, connect your HDMI device and open a terminal with Ctrl + Alt + t, run:

aplay -l

You should see a list of audio devices here:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC290 Analog [ALC290 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Next, play a sound and assign the output device to the HDMI:

aplay -D hdmi:HDMI,1 tmp.wav

The number "1" here is base on the output from the aplay -l command, so it could be 0, 1 or 2. And you can use another file to replace the tmp.wav here.

This should wake your HDMI audio device up, and it will now be available in the Sound settings.

Workaround

If this is the case, a workaround is to edit the config file with:

sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

(vi could be changed with any other editor that you're familiar with)

And append the following line to it:

options snd-hda-intel power_save_controller=N

After reboot, your HDMI audio detection should be working whenever the charger is plugged or not.

Good luck.

P.-H. Lin
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  • I will try this as soon as i have my laptop handy...is there any way to fix settings? Or would a dist-upgrade do that? When i ran the commands listed on the link i gave it removed a lot of the submenus in system settings.. – Oggie7797 Dec 24 '14 at 03:25
  • No, if you're affecting by this bug sudo apt-get dist-upgrade won't help. What you mean by "removed a lot of the submenus"? – P.-H. Lin Dec 24 '14 at 03:37
  • I would post a screenshot but i cant right now...when you go to system settings alot of the options are gone. Appearance, sound, and a few others. If you wanna see for yourself, click the link i posted and at the bottom run those commands.. – Oggie7797 Dec 24 '14 at 03:39
  • Maybe that package messed up with your system, try to remove it from the software center and run sudo apt-get install -f to see whether there's any package needs to be corrected. – P.-H. Lin Dec 24 '14 at 06:58
  • I have tried removing it again, I've tried the install -f thing, I've tried auto clean and frankly im not sure what to do. Since I don't have the rep to post a pic here is a screenshot of my settings....i really need some help getting this fixed and please look at the bottom of the link i sent on my question to see exactly what i done.

    Screenshot: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3gan6fe82eyqv8c/Screenshot%20from%202014-12-24%2002%3A24%3A19.png?dl=0 Before I try everything you said in your original answer I need the audio settings (along with the others) to appear again..

     – Oggie7797 Dec 24 '14 at 08:54
  • ############## I fixed the sound issue and missing settings options by running sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop :) – Oggie7797 Dec 24 '14 at 09:12
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Run

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

to get the icons in system settings back.

hatch
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Sameer
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