[arch-general] GDM and/or PulseAudio mute my sound

[Kyle]

Working from the command line in a text-only console using espeakup, all 
is well, and sound works as it should. However, starting GDM mutes my 
sound card. If I go back to the text console and run

sudo systemctl start alsa-restore

Again, all is well in the text console until I login with GDM. I am 
expecting to hear Orca speaking at this point, but I hear nothing. In 
order to get Orca to speak, I must run gnome-terminal from within GNOME 
and then do

sudo systemctl start alsa-restore

again. Once I do this, I have sound until I shutdown the computer. I 
have tried xdm and lxdm also, and while they themselves don't cause me 
to lose sound at the text console, I am for some reason unable to login 
and use GNOME from either of these display managers. I also tried 
commenting out

load-module module-device-restore

in /etc/pulse/default.pa, as was a possible work-around in a much older 
version of PulseAudio that mentioned /etc/pa.conf, which I translated to 
/etc/pulse/default.pa since there is no /etc/pa.conf, but this also 
doesn't solve my problem. I should note that although I am using systemd 
commands to restore sound, this problem is not related to systemd, as I 
was experiencing the same issue before I migrated to full systemd yesterday.

I am currently running Arch on a USB flash drive connected to a Dell 
Optiplex from about 2003 or 2004, but I can't find the exact model, as 
lshw is only giving me Dell Computer Corporation as the vendor name with 
no model number, and it doesn't even say Optiplex anywhere, although I 
remember reading it somewhere a couple of years ago. The computer was 
given to my family several years ago, but it's basically been a spare 
box until recently when my newer and better designed box passed away due 
to human error. This is why I unfortunately don't have the full 
information about this machine. The sound card is listed by lspci as

00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM 
(ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)

and uses the snd_intel8x0 kernel module. I am currently running 
linux-lts 3.0.40-1, pulseaudio 2.1-1, pulseaudio-alsa 2-1, alsa-utils 
1.0.25-3 and gdm 3.4.1-2. I would appreciate any help anyone can 
provide, and will be happy to answer any questions I may have missed here.
~Kyle