Hi,
Same problem here. I upgraded from 1.1 to 1.2 RC3 today on a fairly clean install (2 days old) Joomla 1.57. I also can't see or hear the message on the Captcha.
The bigger problem is that I have no idea what most of the threads here are talking about!
Can I assume that captcha 2.2 is not yet stable and just delete it? That would seem to be the sensible move for now.
Best of luck with finding the problem as I know you are busy with other "stuff".
Eric