After doing a backup of asterisk from one system, and restoring to a fresh build, you may find that when someone goes to voicemail, there is a seconds silence then it drops out.
If you use *97 and try to record a message, it immediately drops back to the options to save the message without recording anything.
On the new system you will see there is no /var/spool/asterisk/voicemail folder.
If you have access to the original system and want to restore the original voicemail folders, you will need to copy them to the new system.-