gah! help! warty update woes...

[Senectus .]

I just did a "smart update" and now it appears to have broken my sound!
I have a sound blaster live! 
All I get out of the speakers now is little "bips" whenever sound is
used, and that happens until it makes a very high pitched, ear
splitting single tone droning noise that is giving me a headache..
doing /etc/init.d/alsa stop or restart does nothing, doing a reload
will change the tone, and if I do reload again the sound goes away and
It gets replaced with a low quiet "bipping" sound..

Its continuous and never stops..
I've also tried a reboot but the moment sound is loaded it starts it
all over again..

What might I look for to fix it :-(

-- 
Ubuntu Warty 4.10