Two installations of MMA 10.0.1.0 differ in behavior

Question

I'm seeking advice on how to track down what might cause the following difference in behavior. I have two independent installations of MMA 10.0.1.0, both on Mac OS X Mavericks on identical x86 Mac Book Pros vintage 2013.

Consider the following expressions in fresh kernels right after cold-booting the machines and running nothing else outside of whatever junk gets run at boot time.

f[OptionsPattern[]] := With[{y = OptionValue[x]}, y]
f[x -> 42]

42

On one of the two machines, I get the (expected) message

OptionValue::nodef Unknown option x for f. >>

On the other machine, I don't get the message. I guess it's been turned off somewhere, but I don't know how to find out where or how it's been turned off. Any clues on how to search for the cause of the difference or otherwise diagnose this would be greatly appreciated. The situation causes me to lose confidence in the installation that's not producing the expected message.

Is it only this message or all messages? Did you check the Messages tab in the preferences? Do you have anything in the kernel's init.m file for either installation? — Szabolcs, Dec 07 '14 at 17:19
Do you know about How do I fix common problems by resetting the Wolfram System to its default configuration?. — , Dec 07 '14 at 17:56
@Szabolcs Messages tab in the preferences was it. Someone (probably me) set it to Print to console ages ago and then forgot about it. Much obliged. — Reb.Cabin, Dec 07 '14 at 18:47
I guess it's sort of a duplicate of this then ... http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/q/65146/12 (in the sense that the solution is the same). — Szabolcs, Dec 07 '14 at 18:54
Would a user be likely to find the proposed duplicate starting with the symptoms I had? Possibly, but I didn't (and I did do the usual due diligence of looking for a duplicate, first [that's almost a tongue-twister :]). — Reb.Cabin, Dec 07 '14 at 19:43

Two installations of MMA 10.0.1.0 differ in behavior

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