sound failure after upgrade

After last system upgrade, sound has become unresponsive.

Volume control shows: No volume control GStreamer plugins and/or devices found.

I checked the sound card:

komuso@komuso-desktop:~$ lspci | grep audio
00:0a.0 Multimedia audio controller: ESS Technology ES1969 Solo-1 Audiodrive (rev 02)

And when I opened gnome alsa mixer I got the following bug report:

Memory status: size: 33243136 vsize: 0 resident: 33243136 share: 0 rss: 10444800 rss_rlim: 0
CPU usage: start_time: 1174884400 rtime: 0 utime: 196 stime: 0 cutime:188 cstime: 0 timeout: 8 it_real_value: 0 frequency: 0

Backtrace was generated from '/usr/bin/gnome-alsamixer'

(no debugging symbols found)
Using host libthread_db library "/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libthread_db.so.1".
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
[New Thread -1225533776 (LWP 4714)]
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
(no debugging symbols found)
0xffffe410 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
#0 0xffffe410 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
#1 0xb7347323 in __waitpid_nocancel ()
   from /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libpthread.so.0
#2 0xb7eb61b6 in gnome_gtk_module_info_get () from /usr/lib/libgnomeui-2.so.0
#3 <signal handler called>
#4 0x0804cae1 in ?? ()
#5 0x0805fc78 in ?? ()
#6 0x081e12bc in ?? ()
#7 0xbfcbc998 in ?? ()
#8 0x08051366 in ?? ()
#9 0x00000000 in ?? ()

Thread 1 (Thread -1225533776 (LWP 4714)):
#0 0xffffe410 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
No symbol table info available.
#1 0xb7347323 in __waitpid_nocancel ()
   from /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libpthread.so.0
No symbol table info available.
#2 0xb7eb61b6 in gnome_gtk_module_info_get () from /usr/lib/libgnomeui-2.so.0
No symbol table info available.
#3 <signal handler called>
No symbol table info available.
#4 0x0804cae1 in ?? ()
No symbol table info available.
#5 0x0805fc78 in ?? ()
No symbol table info available.
#6 0x081e12bc in ?? ()
No symbol table info available.
#7 0xbfcbc998 in ?? ()
No symbol table info available.
#8 0x08051366 in ?? ()
No symbol table info available.
#9 0x00000000 in ?? ()
No symbol table info available.
#0 0xffffe410 in __kernel_vsyscall ()