minor system sound issue

[rotwang888]

Howdy all. I'm brand new to Ubuntu/Linux and I'm hoping for some help with a little sound problem. I survived getting wireless working (Dell Inspiron B120 with hated Broadband card), so it should be smooth sailing from here on...right?
Anyway, sorry if this has been posted 1,000 times already, but I have a slight sound issue I haven't seen in other threads. Ever since I changed some settings to get sound working in online flash video/youtube (working fine now) I don't get any system sounds. I had been using my own wav files, but the default ones do not play either. I don't remember the details, but I think in trying to deal with the youtube issue I disabled Pulseaudio. Everything in sound preferences is now set to ALSA. This is a pretty minor thing, but if I don't ask I won't learn. Otherwise sound works dandy- music player/video/online sound all at once, etc.
Thanks in advance for any help.

[rotwang888]

No takers? Well, here's a little more info that may or may not be of use to any kind soul out there. While I don't get any system sounds, the drum sound on the login screen does work. Also, before attempting to fix the youtube problem I wasn't getting any sound playing Open Arena -now it works fine. And when I try to test the sound using PulseAudio for the heck of it, I get the error message
audiotestsrc wave=sine freq=512 ! audioconvert ! audioresample ! gconfaudiosink: Failed to connect: Connection refused
That's to be expected, I imagine, but what do I know? That's all the info I can think to pass along. I'll supply anything else. Thanks!

[rotwang888]

bump:)