Audio playing and can't stop it

Question

Level 1

12 points

Audio playing and can't stop it

There is an audio playing on my system (the Obama inauguration speech) . I can't stop it, except by turning off the speakers. I have no copies of Safari running.

Is there any way to track this down?

imac G5, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Feb 4, 2009 8:14 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 4, 2009 8:20 AM in response to stirling-dad

First, look in the Dock for any likely application, such as the Real Player. If nothing, look in System Preference>Activity Monitor to see what processes are running. If you can identify a likely culprit you can quit it. If you can't track it down, you will probably have to restart (or log out and back in again).

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Answer 2

stirling-dad Author

Level 1

12 points

Feb 4, 2009 2:19 PM in response to Roger Wilmut1

Couldn't find an application or process that looked like it was responsible. The closest I could find was coreaudiod.

I suspected that killing it would not help. In fact, when I killed coreaudiod, the sound went away briefly, and started up quickly, as the system re-spawned coreaudiod.

Restarting the system worked!

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Answer 3

stirling-dad Author

Level 1

12 points

Feb 8, 2009 8:04 PM in response to V.K.

Thanks for your suggestions. I don't think I've made a webwidget. If there's one on my system, how would I know?

The speech is still going after several restarts. It's getting pretty annoying, and I've turned off the speakers. Could I be virused (even if it's benign,so far)?

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Answer 4

V.K.

Level 9

56,192 points

Feb 8, 2009 9:41 PM in response to stirling-dad

Stirling Dad wrote:
Thanks for your suggestions. I don't think I've made a webwidget. If there's one on my system, how would I know?

The speech is still going after several restarts. It's getting pretty annoying, and I've turned off the speakers. Could I be virused (even if it's benign,so far)?

to check for web widgets start dashboard and see if you have any web widgets there.

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Answer 5

stirling-dad Author

Level 1

12 points

Feb 9, 2009 1:41 PM in response to stirling-dad

Well, the audios came back, soon after I launched the Dashboard. The comment that a widget was to blame appears right on!

Is there an easy way to figure out which widget is to blame? Widgets are useful and easy to install. So, now, sigh, I have about 70 of them installed and running, and one is errant.

Any thoughts?

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Answer 6

V.K.

Level 9

56,192 points

Feb 9, 2009 5:07 PM in response to stirling-dad

you can simply recreate your dashboard plist. this will not uninstall any widgets but you'll have to manually add them to the active dashboard by clicking on + in the lower left corner after starting dashboard.

to do that, delete the file /users/username/library/preferences/com.apple.dashboard.plist and enter the following in terminal

killall Dock

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Answer 7

stirling-dad Author

Level 1

12 points

Feb 11, 2009 7:29 PM in response to V.K.

I can control the sounds now; though I haven’t found the root cause. The sonds start in two ways, after:
1. System retart
2. Starting dashboard

The sounds consist of two parts:
1. A short ad for either CDW or Cisco
2. The Obama inauguration speech.

“killall Dock” makes the sounds go away except not the way I accessing Terminal, which was via dock widget (Emergency 0.1) that has Terminal, Console and six others. I need to directly access Terminal via the Finder.

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Answer 8

V.K.

Level 9

56,192 points

Feb 4, 2009 8:32 AM in response to stirling-dad

have you made any webwidgets using safari? it could be something in the dashboard that's doing this. start dashboard and see if there is a webclip there. if so, delete it.

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Answer 9

Feb 8, 2009 9:36 PM in response to stirling-dad

What is in your startup items (in Accounts Preferences). It is possible even to have a single file in there and that would start once the login processes were complete.

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