[LAU] pulseaudio headaches

I recently was introduced to nted Tried it on my debian-lenny desktop and it works nicely. But now need it on my laptop for a travel-demo session. Now the laptop (was) running hardy which has some pulseaudio headaches. In any case I had to upgrade because the clone monitor which is needed for a presentation does not work in hardy Now the headaches increase! Pulseaudio more and more tightly integrated into ubuntu and nted (or is it timidity?) does not like it at all. Managed to remove pulse (with some associated packages) nted works once again but I cant adjust volume and and clicks and other ubuntu sounds which could be configured with System->preferences->sound wont come up saying: Waiting for sound system to respond. Any suggestions?