volume control indicator does not have a slider.

Ok, so I know I broke this myself, I'm just not sure how to fix it. I just did a fresh installation of Ubuntu 10.4 x86 on my box. Sound is actually working, and I can control from the alsa mixer, but I have lost the volume indicator applet's control slider. It shows in the taskbar with 3 dashes, and if clicked, only shows "Mute All" which is grey, and "Sound Preferences..." which if selected gives me an error dialog saying "waiting for sound system to respond" with a cancel button.
This happened after I remapped my /home/user directory to an old backup (which was also of a 10.4 system) So I'm certain I broke a gnome configuration directory *somewhere*. But I tried moving or recopying them all from the original home folder, and it hasn't returned. Can anyone explain how or through what configuration file the volume control indicator is mapped to the actual volume mixers?