[ILUG] Intrepid Ibex - audio broken

[Gerard Cunningham]

Having upgraded a Scaleo P Fujitsu Siemens desktop from Ubuntu 8.04 to
8.10, I now have no sound. The first hit on a Google search is a page
from ubuntuforums on audio problems with Ibex, which times out. Not
encouraging.

Clicking on the volume/speaker icon, I get an error saying the volume
control did not find and elements or devices to control. I either don't
have the right Gstreamer plugins installed, or don't have a sound card
configured.

Using synaptic package manager, I installed every gstreamer plugin I
could find, so I assume the problem is I need to configure the
soundcard.

The manuals for the machine give me no information on wh kind of sound
card I have, so I'm at a loss as to where to go from here. I assume I
need to physically look under the hood and take note of a product ID
somewhere, unless there's a way to make the os look for the sound card.

Any suggestions for basic things I could check to see if they resolve
the issue?

(And the basic-er the better, I'm a beginner level end user.)