I screwed up pulseaudio - how can I fix it? (solved)

[mow9902]

Hi - I was playing around with pulseaudio - not sure what I did, but have screwed it up such that it is now not working; I get no volume icon in the tray, and no sound at all. Could someone help please.
My system details are:
Fossapup64-9.6 (been using for many months and has worked perfectly till just now when I screwed it up)
DELL E6420 laptop

I've attached a couple of pics showing the errors I am now seeing.

I'd appreciate any help to resolve 'cause I don't know where to start. Thanks

----
also found this message in the /var/log/messages file

Oct 23 09:53:10 puppypc5746 user.err pulseaudio[6842]: [pulseaudio] core-util.c: Failed to create secure directory (/home/spot/.config/pulse): Operation not permitted
Oct 23 09:53:10 puppypc5746 user.err pulseaudio[6839]: [pulseaudio] main.c: Daemon startup failed.

[rockedge]

Either the configuration file is changed or missing and/or this is an ownership (permissions) problem.

Check to see if the directory /home/spot/.config/pulse exists or is being created. pulseaudio seems be having a conflict when starting backup.

Try killing all the pulseaudio daemons and restarting them manually to see if an error is displayed and to see what happens.

[bigpup]

What happens if you do a complete power off shutdown, wait 1 minute, then do a power on boot up?

Did you add anything that had anything to do with pulseaudio?

[mow9902]

@rockedge
Thanks rockedge ....I came to the same conclusion from the error message in the /var/log/messages file ...so I restored the /home/spot/.config/pulse directory from a recent backup.

Now working normally again. Thanks for the quick reply.

[mikewalsh]

Moved to the FP96-CE sub-forum...

Mike.