Wierd Audio problem in Mint (ubuntu hardy based)

From a fresh install of Mint Elyssa - When I log into secondlife, sound is fine for the entire duration of the session. I log out, and shut down.

When i boot into it again, no sound whatsoever throughout the OS, no matter which sound system is used.. At first I thought it was the soundcard dying, but sound is fine from the LiveCD.

It only happens after a session in secondlife, and i have as yet found no fix to this in hours of googling.

Im a Linux noob, so I really need help to turn the sound back on, since reinstalling my OS on a daily basis is something i came to Linux to get away from...

Do you have pulseaudio?, if so there's a huge bug with the way voice use's pulseaudio, your pulseaudio has probably crashed and froze, and locking out all system sounds unless you kill the pulseaudio process and restart, or reboot.

Simple way to prevent the crash, is to disable voice.

If I understood Aelon correctly, the problem only occours after rebooting, so it's probably something else.

@Aelon: Can you try what happens when, instead of re-installing the OS, you just create a new UNIX user account and login into that? Maybe it's just some user-specific settings which become broken for whatever reason, and nothing system-wide.

After my last Mint Elyssa install threw up some 200+ updates, i just went and upgraded to Felicia, and have since had no issues.