Speech

Question

no response to spoken commands - trawled 'help' but no joy - think i may have messed up the speakable items folder but it could be something else entirely
is there any way of restoring the 'factory settings' without creating a new admin account for myself and then having the hassle of moving everything over into it

Answer 1

moirac,
Have you checked that Apple Speakable Items is turned on in System Preferences>Speech>Speech Recognition>Apple Speakable Items is: on/off?
If it is on, you may want to try trashing the Speech preference files, from your Home/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Speech.......plist. (where "......" represents individual Speech Preference files. Don't empty trash until all checks out. Then log out/ log in (new .plists will be created) and test. If problem is fine delete the files from the trash. If any undue problem arises replace the old .plists where you dragged them out of and trash the newly created ones. I believe there are about four or five speech .plists that you can try that may be corrupt.
As far as returning the computer to factory defaults, "without creating a new admin account", you can try to reset the PRAM, though I am not sure this will be of much good with Speakable Items. It does reset speaker volume etc.
Read both of these carefully before resetting PRAM:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86194
and
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238
At a last resort you could either create a new user and see if this user has the problems existing in your account.
Or you can try Repairing Permissions from Disk Utility and then applying the 10.3.9 Combo update over your OS to see if that will cure the problem. Make sure its the 10.3.9 Combo update found at Apples Downloads.
Hope that helps some,
littleshoulders [:-)