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How to Set Up a Sound Scheme in Windows
Listening to Windows boot up many times a day (as I do at work), I find that I begin to long for a little originality in people's choice of sounds that are associated with various events in Windows. Given how many of them have the default sounds that Microsoft picked for those events, I am surprised that most folks apparently don't realize that you can make choices about which sounds play when Windows events occur. So I thought I'd explain how to set up a sound scheme that has sounds of your choice for the standard events in Windows, such as when Windows opens, when it closes, when the recycle bin is emptied, etc.
You can access the controls for Sounds by clicking on Start / Settings / Control Panel / Sounds. In the dialog box, you'll find a list of Windows events. The list of events and sounds that follows will give you an idea of the possibilities. Your tastes will, of course, dictate which WAV file you associate with which event.
Example Sound Scheme
Windows Event
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Sound
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Click to download the WAV file.
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Critical Stop
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HAL's Voice from
"2001: A Space Odyssey" saying, "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."
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Exit Windows
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Data (From Star Trek: The Next Generation) saying
"Goodnight, Captain.
Sleep well, Sir.".
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Start Windows
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Data saying, "Ah, I have access."
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Empty Recycle Bin
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Humphrey Bogart from Casablanca saying,
"You'll regret it. Maybe not today; maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life."
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You can locate sound files (WAV files) by going to a search engine and typing in "WAV" as the search term. Then merely visit the various sites that your search turns up and listen to the sounds, download the ones you want, and then associate them with the Windows events of your choice.
One word of forewarning, though. Some Windows events occur so often that you'll find you quickly grow tired of the sounds if you have them associated with an event like opening or closing a program. Also, I find that I want sounds that are not too long. Associating something like a song with an event will slow down the performance of your computer as it will be busy playing the sound file before it is fully ready to go on to something else.
The final bit of advice is to suggest that once you've changed a few sound associations, save your new scheme with a name like "Perry's Sound Scheme" so that you can load it again if you decide to modify it. You would just click on "Save as ..." in the sound dialog box in Control Panel.
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