Comment 38 for bug 449783

Hi i found the solution to all sound muting problems this is because alsa mutes the sound when it exits and also if pulseaudio is installed it only exits after alsa meaning when alsa mutes the volume pulseaudio in turn saves that value thus it is mute after every boot

i found the solution here http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=556971

in case u do not understand

edit /etc/init.d/alsa-utils with mousepad or some other editor and find the following lines

 esac
 card_OK "$TARGET_CARD" || log_action_end_msg_and_exit "$( [ ! "$2" ] ; echo $? ; )" "none loaded"
 store_levels "$TARGET_CARD" || EXITSTATUS=1
 mute_and_zero_levels "$TARGET_CARD" || EXITSTATUS=1
 log_action_end_msg_and_exit "$EXITSTATUS"

change mute_and_zero_levels "$TARGET_CARD" || EXITSTATUS=1
to #mute_and_zero_levels "$TARGET_CARD" || EXITSTATUS=1

thus disabling the muting and saves all your troubles

if does not work then:

sudo chmod 777 /var/lib/alsa/asound.state
alsactl store

set alsactl restore to load on startup if it is still mute