Help! Much doesn't work:(

[Patrick Horgan]

I'm on 8.10 and I have a lot of problems.  My sound quit working when I 
upgraded.  My sessions quit working when I upgraded, i.e. I have to log 
into everything over again after logging back in.   
System/Preferences/Sessions/Options/Remember Currently Running 
Application has no effect.  I've done all the sound debugging, tried 
everything anyone ever recommended for pulseaudio or alsa.  Everything's 
set up right, nothing's muted, the right drivers for my hardware, (the 
same one's as before the upgrade), are installed and in memory, all the 
volumes are up, but no sound.
    Before upgrading, and it's the reason I upgraded hoping that things 
would get better, Openoffice had not worked for several weeks, seg 
faulting in an openoffice library, but oddly enough  Apport, even though 
it does report other things, doesn't notice the seg fault, I have to be 
in gdb to see it.  Filing a bug report on it just got them to tell me it 
was an invalid report because it didn't come via apport.  The stuff in 
~/.openoffice.org2 isn't set up correctly, (I can see it in strace, 
failing in access just before the seg-fault), but deleting it and 
letting it try to set up again doesn't help. Deleting openoffice and 
reinstalling doesn't help.
    Also, before upgrading all of my removable stuff quit working, i.e. 
plugging in a CDROM, DVD, usb flash drive, or SD flash never results in 
automatic mounting, although I can manually mount.  Pushing the button 
on the cd/dvd to eject quit working at the same time, although I can 
eject from the command line.
    I'm on a Dell inspiron 1420.

Patrick