No sound 18.04 and tried all the answers I can find

I have lost sound on my Ubuntu PC. I recently upgraded to a newer LTS (18.04). The sound was working after that. I powered off the PC for the night (something I rarely do) and in the morning, I had no sound.

My first port of call was sudo modprobe snd-hda-intel as that has fixed sound issues in the past.

I have confirmed that the sound is connected and that the speakers are working (by piping in Alexa playing songs from a playlist into the same sound desk as the PC. Yes, I have tried alsamixer. It did not help as it is convinced everything is fine.

According to pavucontrol (as per this answer) there is sound. I'm just not getting it to output. I have worked my way through this (including all the reboots).

I have tried killall pulseaudio a few times between reboots as suggested in a bug report. This did not make any difference.

I put a sound.conf in /etc/modprobe.d and assed this:

 options snd_hda_intel probe_only=0,1

Again this was as per some online advice.

I tried sudo alsa force-reload as suggested here. This only stopped pavucontrol from showing any "sound" going on.

So tell me - what have I missed and what do I need to do to get my sound working?

Update #1: I can now add resetting pulseaudio configuration by following the steps given under option #3 in this answer as suggested by Raff.

Update #2: Tried everything here too.

Update #3: I tried purging and reinstalling as per this answer. Still nothing.

Update #4: pacmd list-cards gives this:

2 card(s) available.
index: 0
name: <alsa_card.pci-0000_00_05.0>
driver: <module-alsa-card.c>
owner module: 7
properties:
    alsa.card = "0"
    alsa.card_name = "HDA NVidia"
    alsa.long_card_name = "HDA NVidia at 0xddff8000 irq 23"
    alsa.driver_name = "snd_hda_intel"
    device.bus_path = "pci-0000:00:05.0"
    sysfs.path = "/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:05.0/sound/card0"
    device.bus = "pci"
    device.vendor.id = "10de"
    device.vendor.name = "NVIDIA Corporation"
    device.product.id = "03f0"
    device.product.name = "MCP61 High Definition Audio"
    device.form_factor = "internal"
    device.string = "0"
    device.description = "Built-in Audio"
    module-udev-detect.discovered = "1"
    device.icon_name = "audio-card-pci"
profiles:
    input:analog-stereo: Analogue Stereo Input (priority 60, available: unknown)
    output:analog-stereo: Analogue Stereo Output (priority 6000, available: no)
    output:analog-stereo+input:analog-stereo: Analogue Stereo Duplex (priority 6060, available: unknown)
    output:iec958-stereo: Digital Stereo (IEC958) Output (priority 5500, available: unknown)
    output:iec958-stereo+input:analog-stereo: Digital Stereo (IEC958) Output + Analogue Stereo Input (priority 5560, available: unknown)
    off: Off (priority 0, available: unknown)
active profile: <output:iec958-stereo+input:analog-stereo>
sinks:
    alsa_output.pci-0000_00_05.0.iec958-stereo/#5: Built-in Audio Digital Stereo (IEC958)
sources:
    alsa_output.pci-0000_00_05.0.iec958-stereo.monitor/#7: Monitor of Built-in Audio Digital Stereo (IEC958)
    alsa_input.pci-0000_00_05.0.analog-stereo/#8: Built-in Audio Analogue Stereo
ports:
    analog-input-front-mic: Front Microphone (priority 8500, latency offset 0 usec, available: no)
        properties:
            device.icon_name = "audio-input-microphone"
    analog-input-rear-mic: Rear Microphone (priority 8200, latency offset 0 usec, available: no)
        properties:
            device.icon_name = "audio-input-microphone"
    analog-input-linein: Line In (priority 8100, latency offset 0 usec, available: yes)
        properties:
            
    analog-output-lineout: Line Out (priority 9900, latency offset 0 usec, available: no)
        properties:
            
    analog-output-headphones: Headphones (priority 9000, latency offset 0 usec, available: no)
        properties:
            device.icon_name = "audio-headphones"
    iec958-stereo-output: Digital Output (S/PDIF) (priority 0, latency offset 0 usec, available: unknown)
        properties:
            
index: 1
name: <alsa_card.pci-0000_02_00.1>
driver: <module-alsa-card.c>
owner module: 8
properties:
    alsa.card = "1"
    alsa.card_name = "HDA NVidia"
    alsa.long_card_name = "HDA NVidia at 0xdfe7c000 irq 19"
    alsa.driver_name = "snd_hda_intel"
    device.bus_path = "pci-0000:02:00.1"
    sysfs.path = "/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:09.0/0000:02:00.1/sound/card1"
    device.bus = "pci"
    device.vendor.id = "10de"
    device.vendor.name = "NVIDIA Corporation"
    device.product.id = "0e08"
    device.product.name = "GF119 HDMI Audio Controller"
    device.string = "1"
    device.description = "GF119 HDMI Audio Controller"
    module-udev-detect.discovered = "1"
    device.icon_name = "audio-card-pci"
profiles:
    output:hdmi-stereo: Digital Stereo (HDMI) Output (priority 5400, available: no)
    output:hdmi-surround: Digital Surround 5.1 (HDMI) Output (priority 300, available: no)
    output:hdmi-surround71: Digital Surround 7.1 (HDMI) Output (priority 300, available: no)
    output:hdmi-stereo-extra1: Digital Stereo (HDMI 2) Output (priority 5200, available: no)
    output:hdmi-surround-extra1: Digital Surround 5.1 (HDMI 2) Output (priority 100, available: no)
    output:hdmi-surround71-extra1: Digital Surround 7.1 (HDMI 2) Output (priority 100, available: no)
    off: Off (priority 0, available: unknown)
active profile: <output:hdmi-stereo>
sinks:
    alsa_output.pci-0000_02_00.1.hdmi-stereo/#6: GF119 HDMI Audio Controller Digital Stereo (HDMI)
sources:
    alsa_output.pci-0000_02_00.1.hdmi-stereo.monitor/#9: Monitor of GF119 HDMI Audio Controller Digital Stereo (HDMI)
ports:
    hdmi-output-0: HDMI / DisplayPort (priority 5900, latency offset 0 usec, available: no)
        properties:
            device.icon_name = "video-display"
    hdmi-output-1: HDMI / DisplayPort 2 (priority 5800, latency offset 0 usec, available: no)
        properties:
            device.icon_name = "video-display"

Update #5: I'm at a loss to explain why this worked. Either something decided to alter which jack ports to send sound to or one of my friends is under the mistaken belief that they are funny. I got desperate and started checking all the stupid stuff I would check for a non-technical user with IT problems. As far as I know, the sound out jack has been in the same socket for the last four years. That's because my spine is foobar and the case is under my desk and thus largely out of reach without help from my flatmate. Nevertheless, moving to the middle socket seems to have worked. It beats me as to why...

I don't know; just checking: But, the latest version of Ubuntu is not 18.04 LTS, it is 20.04.1 LTS. (If you updated to a newer version (newer than 18.04 LTS), please edit that in your question) And; have you looked trough all controls in pavucontrol (You have it up and running in the screenshot I can see) So that nothing is muted?

(In my case awhile ago, one output source was muted in my pavucontrol. speaker/button was on "muted [x]" in pavucontrol, which begun working when I un-muted it.)

And if this isn't the case, in my second case; it was that I just had to pick the correct output/input source in pavucontrol. It was awhile ago, So I'm not sure if this can be of any help, but hopefully it is!

I'm sorry if none of these worked, If not I will look in to it, because I had the same problem multiple times before. With different Linux OS's. Good luck!

EDIT: I HAD exactly this problem today!

I solved it by

• removing pavucontrol
• rebooting
• Install pavucontrol again, and it started working!

Hope this can be helpful to anyone in the future!

Regards.