How to Change the Startup Music and Sound Effects on Every Version of Microsoft Windows

First things first, you will need to use WAV files (universal raw sound files that store uncompressed audio data and can play back on any windows or other machine in most cases).

Many people are already familiar with MP3 files (which are compressed and encoded audio files that store music data). MP3 files cannot be used as-is for this, because they are not automatically recognized by the windows subsystem. Therefore, if you plan to use an audio or music clip from an MP3 file, you will need to convert it to a WAV file first, or use a freeware audio editor (such as Audacity, which is a freely available cross-platform audio editor you can download any time from http://audacity.sourceforge.net ).

Your audio clip for an event, start-up, or shutdown is usually best if it is limited to a 400k wav file or smaller file (music or sound durations of 5-10 seconds or less are generally best because they create smaller files, load faster, and do not make the user wait too long to use the system when it boots. If you really want to be safe about it, try to keep the wav samples between 64k to 128k. You can lower the quality of them a little if you need to for longer sounds that don't take as much space). You can have music that goes between 30 seconds to an entire minute, but please be aware that having it longer than 15 to 20 seconds may delay the start-up of your machine significantly.

It is ideal to use sounds or music samples which are noticeable but not too loud or too sharp when heard, since you will be hearing them frequently as you use your computer daily.

If you already have a wav file (or a set of wav files) that you intend to use, then all you need to do is press your Start button, go to the Control Panel, and from there select Sounds and Audio devices. When that box pops up, select the tab that says "Sounds".

The contents of the box will change, and you will see halfway down the menu page that there is text which says "Program events". Right below that text is a white scroll box which lists system events for windows, and the sounds that are associated with each one. You can use the side to scroll up and down through the many events listed there. For every event that already has a sound assigned to it, there will be a small speaker icon next to it. If there is no speaker icon for an event, then that event is silent until you assign a sound to it.

When you left click your mouse over a selection, you will be able to play the existing sound for the event you have just highlighted. Just above the cancel button on this menu box, you will see a small button that looks like the "play" button on most cd and dvd players and programs that let you play audio or video. It is to the left of the browse button. If you click the play button, it will play the sound currently assigned to the event you highlighted on the box.

If you wish to assign a different sound to an event, make sure you are on the event you want to modify (have it highlighted), and then you can click the "browse" button. When you click the browse button, a file menu box will appear. From here, you can select from a list of default wav files that normally appear in the file box. If you want to preview these sounds before you assign them to an event, just highlight one (left click one time) over a file name, then use the "play" and "stop" buttons you will see on that file box to play or stop a sound. If you like the sound you previewed, you can click the OK button and it will be assigned. If you do not wish to change the event's sound, then you can click the "Cancel" button to go back to the event selection box.

You can change one or many of the sound events that windows does. If you do not wish to use the default wav files, then you can make your own by using audio software to write your own music, such as Fruity Loops. You can also convert from mp3 to wav, edit multimedia files directly, or convert the aac files from Apple iPod, iTunes, Napster or other music software libraries into short wav file clips that you can use with this. Once you have converted an mp3 or aac file into a wav file and made it a shorter clip, you can use the "browse" button to navigate to where you have stored that clip, preview it to ensure it plays, and then click OK to select it.

While you can save your changes to a sound scheme file for future selection and storage of your sound changes, it is easier to just ignore that if you only plan on changing one or two sounds on the system (like the Start Windows and Exit Windows events: the two events responsible for playing music at the start-up and shutdown of Microsoft Windows).

When you are satisfied with the changes you have made, click the "Apply" button, and then click the OK button on the menu box. The sounds you have selected should be effective immediately and whenever those events occur, you will hear the sounds and music that you wanted to rather than the default ones that Microsoft Windows assigns.

If you wish to have no sounds at all from Windows, then you can achieve this by simply using the drop-down list-box at the top of the menu page called "Sound Scheme:" (it is above the events box that we have been working with most of this article). One of the selections on this box that can be chosen says "No Sounds". If you select this setting, then hit the "Apply", and then the "OK" button...it will not let windows make any sounds on events, but you will still hear all music and sounds from programs, media players, movies, and games.

If you decide that you don't like the silence, then you can always reset the sounds back to the default ones by selecting the Windows Default setting on the Sound Schemes list-box.

Feel free to play around with the Windows sounds and music, create anything you want and save it as a WAV file with Audacity. If you do not want to download Audacity or can't (but want to use the windows built-in sound recorder), you can select it from the Programs menu under accessories and Entertainment, or go there directly. You can go there directly under Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 by pressing the Start button, clicking Run (or use the search bar that you see for vista and windows 7 that should already be there), and then type out: SNDREC32

Now you can press the OK button, and the sound recorder will launch.

As long as you have access to a microphone and want to record your own sound effect or voice to a wav file, you can!

Oh, and by the way? As mentioned earlier, if you already have wav files that you made or downloaded that do not need any editing, then you can use those right away and won't have to worry about using Audacity, Windows Sound Recorder software, or anything else if you don't want to! Just browse, select, and go!

And if you want to download new wavs from the net and use those for your sound events, then be sure to check out the link attached to the end of this article called The Daily Wav! It has a huge selection of popular quotes, sounds, and samples already in a wav format ready for you to use! Each section is categorized by year for your convenience. If ever that site goes down, you can find plenty of wav files from all over the web just by doing a Google, Yahoo or Bing search for "wav files"

So next time you start up your computer and people hear a cool sound effect (or a music clip they like) and wonder how you did it...just tell them that you figured it out after reading an Associated Content article!