My battery ran out before I had time to shutdown the system cleanly, when I started up again I could not use mic with skype, msn etc. And when I tried to run skype I got error, similar error occured when I tried to run alsamixer:

# skype
ALSA lib conf.c:2700snd_config_hooks_call) Cannot open shared library libasound_module_conf_pulse.so
ALSA lib control.c:909snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL hw:0
Aborted

# alsamixer
ALSA lib conf.c:2700snd_config_hooks_call) Cannot open shared library libasound_module_conf_pulse.so
ALSA lib control.c:909snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL default

alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or directory

After some searching I found a temporary workaround: in the /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf comment out the line that says:
"/usr/share/alsa/pulse.conf"

This enabled me to run skype and alsamixer, however the mic still does not work, speakers work fine.

Any ideas how I can fix this please?