No sound upon start, automatically decreases to 0, libcanberra in settings constantly restarts

[Pieniążkowice]

Hi there,

I am working on a rather old computer, if you need more details about it you can look at this post here:

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtop...70354#p2770354

So I got Kubuntu 25.10, and the installation sort of went okay, but then I got no sound at all, which was not an issue during a LiveUSB session.

In the middle of the screen, I have a "Audio Muted" box I cannot remove. In the Sound tab in System Settings,

libcanberra

is going absolutely nuts and is constantly changing volume from a certain non-zero value to 0, and so in a loop. I can't find a way to stop this loop.

Moreover, while I can move the slider on the speakers panel to the right, the volume is automatically being reduced to 0. I do sometimes hear the speakers work but I can't stop the system from decreasing the volume. By default, they are off.

Ran

pactl subscribe

as suggested elsewhere, and I see a constant loop of new events that looks like this:

Event "new" on sink-input
Event "change" on sink-source x2
Event "change" on sink
Event "change" on source
Event "change" on sink-input
Event "remove" on sink-input
Event "change" on sink
Event "change" on source

and this is going on and on

My CPU is constantly at 50% load, which is ridiculous for an ambient workload. Memory is not impacted.

An additional piece of ibfo that may be relevant is that I get a lot of 26^~ symbols upon booting, but itbdoes not interrupt anything.

Any help appreciated.