Just as a quick addition, both affected machines are running GNOME, and prior to discovering the .pulse/ broken symlink, my previous workaround was to boot the machines in GNOME's fail-safe mode, which seemed to work. But now, a regular "full" login works with the new workaround.
Just as a quick addition, both affected machines are running GNOME, and prior to discovering the .pulse/ broken symlink, my previous workaround was to boot the machines in GNOME's fail-safe mode, which seemed to work. But now, a regular "full" login works with the new workaround.