no sound

[Jonathan Goodman]

Hi,
Recently I allowed an update to Ubuntu lucid lynx and suddenly my
computer became silent. I tried opening envy24(for my envy ice1712 card)
-no deal. Alsa mixer from the command line 
-doesn't exist.I tried synaptic to may-be reinstall or fix,received the
following: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'sudo dpkg
--configure -a' to correct the problem. 
I tried and received the following: parse error, in file
'/var/lib/dpkg/updates/0001' near line 0:
 field name `state.VT82xx' must be followed by colon
force corrected the colon tried again and received this:dpkg: parse
error, in file '/var/lib/dpkg/updates/0001' near line 128:
 missing package name
(1) I don't understand what package name to put there.
(2) It seems to me that there will be an endless stream of error
messages.
Before this update every thing worked really well. Now I'm left severely
in the lurch.
I am a musician windows user (not software technician)  who was forced
by circumstances to setup a Linux machine for my partner to print a
music collection and establish a reference library for devotional music
with recordings coupled with musical notes and text.
Since he isn't able to do any of the work himself I have to wander in a
place where I know nothing.
I will very much appreciate guidance.

Sincerely,
                        Jonathan