Disabling Windows XP Sounds

Is there a way to disable the Microsoft Windows XP boot up sound? If my volume is on, I have to hear the darn thing and there are times that quiet is a necessity. Can you help me find and nuke the wav file?

- David

This question was answered on July 6, 2006. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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Windows has the ability to assign sounds to just about any action and we’re all familiar with the default sounds for startup, shutdown and errors.

Any of these assigned sounds can be turned off or changed to something that is more to your liking You can even download lots of free sounds that will work as long as the are in the .wav file format.

To make changes to your standard system sounds, you will need to access the Windows Control Panel Depending upon how your Start menu is configured, you may see a direct link to the Control Panel when you click on the Start button or it may be under the Settings option.

If there is not an obvious option for opening the Control Panel, you can always click on Start/Run and type “control” then hit Enter

Once the Control Panel window is open, look for the “Sounds and Audio Devices” option and open it.

Click on the “Sounds” tab at the top to display all of your sound options If you want to change up the default sounds as a group, you can select from the drop down menu the “No Sounds” option to turn off all of the sounds, Windows Default to put it back to the way it came or one of the other themes that may be installed in your system (generally only one called Utopia comes pre-installed).

If you want to disable a specific task, simply scroll down the list of “Program Events” until you find the one you want to modify and click on it The currently assigned sound file will be displayed at the bottom of the window with a button to the right that will play the current sound.

You can choose any of the sounds in the drop down box or scroll to the top of the list and choose [None] if you want total silence.

If you have other .wav files on your computer already, you can click on the Browse button to select anything on your computer.

There are a number of sights that offer free sound file snippets in the .wav format in themes ranging from Star Trek, to Star Wars to popular cartoons Sounds for animals, machines, people and just about any sound effect have been posted on the web for your disposal.

Some of my favorite sites that are not loaded with ads and potential spyware include www.waveevents.com, www.the-earchives.com, www.wavsource.com and www.findsounds.com

If you really want to customize your sounds, you can convert any of your MP3 music files into short .wav files using a free utility such as MP3-2-wav Converter, which is available at www.snapfiles.com If you choose to make your own .wav files, be sure to keep the length of the file to less than 10 seconds or it may slow down your computer

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Posted by Ken Colburn of Data Doctors on July 6, 2006

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