Create a different sound for every event or action on your PC

Home PCs used to have a limited sonic vocabulary – in fact, it was pretty much ‘beep’ with the occasional ‘beep-beep’ for emphasis.

A modern Windows computer, though, is chock-full of musical notes and noises. Unless you know how to rein it in, your PC will sound off at almost every opportunity – when it starts and stops, when it does something and even when it can’t do something.

In this Back to Basics we will explain how Windows’ sounds work, what they are for, where they are stored, how to switch them off and how to change just one, or all of them.

Meet Windows sounds
Windows XP, Vista and 7 each come with a collection of sounds that indicate when various events or actions occur.

For example, a ditty is played when Windows starts and a complementary tune is emitted when it shuts down. Elsewhere, a noise will sound when, say, the Recycle Bin is emptied or if Windows otherwise needs your attention.

In all there are dozens of events and actions with which sounds can be associated. In all cases, though, their point is to act as ‘notifications’ – they tell you that something is happening and Windows is providing an audible cue.

To hear all this the computer needs a sound card of some description (but these days, you can pretty much take it as a given that the computer will have one) and either a set of speakers or a pair of headphones plugged in.

Playing Windows sounds
Let’s have a listen to some sounds. XP users should click the Start button and then select Control Panel. When the window opens, click the Switch to Classic View link then.

Now double-click the Sounds and Audio Devices icon and then, when the dialogue box appears, click the Sounds tab at the top. Click on one of the items in the list of Program events (make sure it has a speaker icon next to it indicating it has an associated sound) and click the little triangle-shaped Play button to the left of the Browse button.

Windows 7 and Vista users should click Start and then choose Control Panel from the menu. When the window opens, click Hardware and Sound.

Now click the Change system sounds link below the Sound heading. You can now audition individual sounds by clicking to select one of the entries in the Program Events list (make sure it has a speaker icon next to it) and then clicking the Test button.

Changing Windows’ sounds
The range and specific sounds on offer will depend on the version of Windows installed. To change a sound, first select its entry from the Program Events list. Now click to open the Sounds dropdown menu at the bottom of the dialogue box and choose a different sound – audition it by clicking the Play/Test button.

(If an event doesn’t have a sound associated with it by default, one can be assigned in the same way – click the event, open the list of sounds, choose one, audition it and click OK.)

Also, most editions of Windows include different ‘sound schemes’ to replace the default one in one fell swoop. From the Sound dialogue box, open the dropdown list under the Sound Scheme heading to see what’s there: Windows 7 Home Premium, for example, has 14 alternatives.

To create your own sound scheme, first change the individual sounds as described above. When done, click the Save As button, type in a name for the scheme and click OK.

If you ever want to go back to the original set of sounds, open the Sound Scheme list, choose Windows Default and click OK.

Removing Windows’ sounds
If Windows’ sounds are driving you mad there is a quick and easy way to solve the problem.

Left-click on the speaker icon in the Notification Area (that’s the right-hand end of the Taskbar, where there are probably quite a few icons) and when the volume slider appears, either drag it right down to the bottom or tick the Mute box (XP) or click the Mute button (Vista and Windows 7).

Alternatively, just reduce the volume so the sounds aren’t so intrusive.

Of course, that’s a bit of a drastic option – you might want to be more selective. The New Mail Notification, for instance, sounds every time an email arrives, which could be annoying to heavy email users.

To silence only that sound, open the Sound dialogue box as before, locate New Mail Notification in the Program Events list, click to select it and open the Sounds dropdown menu below.

Scroll up to the top of the list, choose (None) and click the Apply button. The speaker icon will be removed and there will be no noise when new email arrives.

 

 

Make some noise
It should be obvious by now that Windows’ sounds serve many purposes. But we have shown you don’t have to settle for Microsoft’s standard-issue pings and dings: it’s easy to download new sounds or entire sound schemes from the web.

Search for and download WAV files from the web, as this is the file format Windows employs for its own sounds.

Create a folder to store them in and then set about changing the default sounds as described in the main feature. However, this time, instead of choosing sounds from the dropdown menu, click the Browse button and navigate to the folder where the downloaded WAV sounds are saved. When finished adding sounds, click OK.

If you are really keen, plug in a microphone and use the Sound Recorder utility that’s included with Windows to record your own sounds.

Record a few voiced alerts, for example, and you can have literal announcements of what Windows is up to or wants – and that could even improve your productivity.