Mail sounds don't work anymore

[photonyd]

I'm using Mail in OS 10.3.5. It works fine, I'm using multiple email accounts (4 of them), and my receiving and sending sounds no longer work. Selecting those sounds and settings in the preferences yields sound, but when I get new mail, no sound happens. Same with sending, no sent mail (jet) sound. Tried setting up a rule for sound to affect every message, didn't work. Can bounce the icon annoyingly for days with a rule, but no sound. All my other error messages are fine, system prefs seem fine.

It's the same on my Powerbook and desktop (G4 D.A.), so I'm thinking I did something.

Taking my powerbook into an Apple Store and letting the Genius at the Genius Bar work with it didn't help. I'd verified permissions, so that was clean. We installed and used MacJanitor, nothing. He went in on the terminal and reset the NVRAM. We trashed preferences, renamed folders, nothing worked. He suggested I post here to see if you guys had any ideas or had heard of this? I posted originally on apple's support forums, several others popped up and said they had the same problem, nobody had answers.

Help?

 

[dotnina]

He suggested I post here to see if you guys had any ideas or had heard of this?

He told you to post on Macrumors? The man has good taste!

It seems you've tried just about everything, so here's all I can imagine ... do you view your mail through a web client and download the copy off the server later, using Mail? This might be a long shot, but maybe it no longer sees the mail as "new," and thus it doesn't play the "New Mail Sound?"

Besides that, there's all the obvious things ... is your volume turned up all the way, is the sound you've selected actually on your computer, etc ...

Sorry, that's all I've got.

 

[bubbamac]

I've got the same problem, sort of.

The sound that is supposed to play when my wife's email arrives, doesn't - although the rest of the email sounds work fine.

In iCal, I'm using one of the default sounds for some of the items - and a different (custom) sound plays. That same custom sound is supposed to play for other items, but doesn't.

BTW, this all worked correctly a couple of months ago. I don't recall changing anything regarding these sounds.

I've tried everything but resetting the NVRAM, and zapping the PRAM.

I'm confused! I can't wait to hear the ideas, 'cause I'm out of 'em.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

I had a similar problem (the new mail sound wouldn't play, but the sending mail sound and all the other sounds did) earlier. I reinstalled Mac OS X (and reapplied all the updates) for something completely unrelated, and it seems to be working now. I'm stumped - it's not like anything significant that's e-mail related changed.

 

[photonyd]

still nothing

Thanks for the suggestion on the server-side stuff. Nothing happened, though.

And as for reinstalling everything, alas, I don't have time, perhaps I can on the Powerbook. I guess all I can do is hope it gets fixed by upgrading to "Good Buddy", er, 10.4.

 

[JFreak]

unfortunately i cannot give you any help, but i just wanted to say that digidesign hasn't qualified 10.3.5 with protools systems, so that would indicate that the OS release is a bad one. i suggest you re-install the system and upgrade to 10.3.4 which is the best osx release so far. i'm suspecting there will be a 10.3.6 sooner than you think...

(for someone who wonders "digidesign who? protools what?", that is a company that making a product that is used in 100% of major recording studios all over the world. the system just cannot fail in any situation, so they pay attention to the OS release way more than any of us can imagine.)

 

[photonyd]

10.3.5 seems fine in all other ways. Honestly, i don't remember if the 10.3.4 to 10.3.5 update was the time the sound stopped. I just noticed one day. It would seem that it would have to be a more widespread thing if it was the actual OS. I'm more worried about corruption, but all the utilities I've used so far show everything being fine.

 

[photonyd]

more on this...

OK, here's something odd. A trip to the Genius Bar didn't work.

In system preferences, the alert sounds play when I change volume, but not when I click on the alert sounds themselves nor the alert volume. I started checking this when I found I also couldn't hear anyone on iChat, even with all the right prefs. The alerts on iChat play fine, but no audio for chat. The other parties can hear my voice, I can't hear them.

I think there's a conflict.

Anyone want to start comparing apps, prefs, etc.?