Modprobe gives warnings during startup about /etc/modules.conf being more recent than */modules.depend. Duh! That's normal when you run anything which edits this file such as sndconfig or linuxconf (for ethernet options). Seems this warning should she hushed since it's common to change modules.conf.
This defect is considered MUST-FIX for Winston Gold-release
This is expected behaviour since the module paths could have been changed, causing the dependencies to be all wrong. The correct fix is probably to get sndconfig et al to re-run depmod -a after modifying modules.conf. Even better would be to run depmod -A (which is a lot quicker).
Wherever the bug is, it most definitely is not in the kernel...
message removed in 2.4.6-1.