Comment 5 for bug 326441

I thought the apport automatic uploads included more information, like lshw & lsmod outputs.

A possibly significant detail occurred to me about my duplicate of this issue (bug 329013); I
wanted to check if the same was true of the others.

My system that has the problem has no audio hardware. PC Speaker is all. [it has an SB16-ish clone that isn't being recognized.] When Mixer is working it has only "Master" volume; when I open the full Mixer UI it shows only two audio "devices", a Null Source and a Null Sink.

So maybe it's crashing due to assuming at least one non-null audio device is present.

To duplicate on system with working sound hardware (general idea -- not tested by me):

  sudo 'echo "blacklist snd" > /etc/modprobe.d/local-blacklist'

then reboot. You might need a different point of leverage in the sound stack, I haven't explored. _Might_ be sufficient to unload sound drivers when already running -- but only if that causes Mixer [via HAL?]
to forget about the hardware; and then only if it leaves Mixer in the bad state. Try:

  lsmod | awk '/snd/ { print $1}' | sudo xargs rmmod

[not recommended unless you're comfortable with module hackery & prepared for a possible system crash...]