Screen Flashing Instead of Beep

[NovaScotian]

For reasons I can't sort out, my screens have started flashing when I would normally expect a beep. I have repeatedly looked to see that System Preferences > Accessibility > Audio > "Flash the screen when an alert occurs" is not checked. How else can this be happening? Running OS X 10.8.2 on an iMac. There doesn't seem to be a com.apple.accessibility.pref or something like that that I could trash.

[hayne]

Is your audio volume set to zero or on "mute" ?

[macosnoob]

Quote: Originally Posted by NovaScotian There doesn't seem to be a com.apple.accessibility.pref or something like that that I could trash.

If it's a corrupt plist, it's com.apple.systemsound.plist -- at least under 10.6.8.

The com.apple.sound.beep.flash key should be 0 (for off).

[NovaScotian]

@ hayne -- nope; it's about midway on the scale. I have external speakers and things like Mail make their sound normally. It's just beeps.

@macosnoob -- looks as you say it should:

[NaOH]

In case it's different from what you already checked, what's your Alert Volume set to in System Preferences > Sound > Sound Effects? Have you restarted?

Quote: Originally Posted by NovaScotian There doesn't seem to be a com.apple.accessibility.pref or something like that that I could trash.

10.7 has a com.apple.universalaccess.plist, and that would presumably contain the Accessibility preferences.

[NovaScotian]

They are all set midway, alert volume, output volume and left-right balance (first two panes). Restarting cures the problem for a day or so (I've tried before) and then it reappears. My simple test is this:

repeat 3 times
beep
delay 1
end repeat

com.apple.universalaccess.plist has this in the middle (note that flash screen is set to NO)

[macosnoob]

A beep alert in any application? This is a full-screen flash? (Terminal has its own "visual bell" setting, for instance, but only the Terminal window flashes in that case.)

[NovaScotian]

As a matter of fact, I first noticed it while playing Freecell -- I often back out of a blind situation with Undo (Cmd-Z) until the I hear the beep. Freecell's pref file doesn't have a beep or flash entry. Having restarted just now, however, the flash is not happening in Freecell or AppleScript. Weird indeed.