Disable Thinkpad Sound?

[Keith Meyer]

Hello all,
I have a Thinkpad 600E, which runs great with Hoary except the sound 
which is a devil to get working in Linux period. Since I don't use the 
sound for anything, the laptop is mainly for programming checking mail 
and other web things, I was wanting to disable it from the system 
completely, from the boot up process to the mixers. Is there a way I can 
do this? I will confess that I have researched this but not too indepth.

Keith