No sound card in "Sound/Hardware", headphones not working

[DB1]

I have 64-bit mint 12 installed. When using PulseAudio, Settings/Sound/Hardware showed the integrated intel soundcard. Sound was a bit patchy, but I could not get microphone (on headset) to work.

Reading the forums, it seems PulseAudio is viewed poorly, so I installed the alsa tools. Now I have:
1. Very clear sound from speakers
2. Working microphone
3. Plugging in headphones does not mute the speakers
4. No sound in headphones
5. No soundcard shown in Settings/Sound/Hardware

I tried adding "options snd-hda-intel model=eapd probe_mask=1 position_fix=1" to alsa-base.conf and it made no difference.

Can anyone suggest a way I can fix 3, 4 and 5? Even if it means going back to PulseAudio?

P.S. newbie linux user
Thanks

DB