Comment 8 for bug 200182

This is not a bug for Dell Installs. On Dell Laptops, if you have modem support your modules comes from Dell ppa. If you want modem *and* sound working together you must stay with Dell ppa packages. Maybe you should stick the modules package version to Dell ppa repos.

user@dell-laptop:~$ sudo apt-cache policy linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24-23-generic
linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24-23-generic:
  Installé : 2.6.24-23.37Dell1
  Candidat : 2.6.24-23.37Dell1
 Table de version :
 *** 2.6.24-23.37Dell1 0
        500 http://ppa.launchpad.net hardy/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2.6.24-23.37 0
        500 http://ftp.crihan.fr hardy-updates/main Packages
        500 http://ftp.crihan.fr hardy-security/main Packages

user@dell-laptop:~$ sudo apt-cache policy linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24-24-generic
linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24-24-generic:
  Installé : 2.6.24-24.39
  Candidat : 2.6.24-24.39
 Table de version :
 *** 2.6.24-24.39 0
        500 http://ftp.crihan.fr hardy-updates/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

As you can see, there is no Dell version of 2.6.24-24, so sound is broken when you update because you get package from ubuntu updates.