Customize or Disable Sound Events in Windows 7 or Vista

If you’re looking for a way to customize your system with more than wallpapers and icons, another thing you can do is customize sounds for different Windows 7 events. Here we look at customizing sounds or completely turning them off.

Right-click on the speaker icon in your taskbar and select Sounds.

This opens the window where you can go through and change sounds for different Windows events. Scroll to the event you want to change the sound for…

Then select from a list of included WAV files you want to try out for the event.

Then click on the Test button to preview how it will sound. If you’re happy with it click OK. You can Browse for other sounds as well that you might have downloaded or created. Keep in mind that for best results use a WAV file.

Here we selected the Windows Logon event and selected Chimes.wav for it.

Also, keep in mind that when you change Windows 7 Themes it will also change the sounds associated with it.

If you want to create your own custom sounds, a cool program is iFX Seven Sound Creator (link below). It’s a free tool that will allow you to create you’re own custom sounds from your own music or sound file collection. It also lets you find free sound samples from sites like The Freesound Project and create your own with the Open Source program Audacity. 

Disable Logon Sound
You might not be interested in customizing sounds, in fact  you want to turn them off. To turn off the Windows Startup Sound just uncheck the box Play Windows Startup sound…then click OK.

If you don’t want an event to make a sound, just choose the event and select None from the Sounds menu. You can pick and choose what you do or don’t want to play a sound.

For example here we turned off the sound when connecting a USB drive or other hardware devices.

Or if you don’t want any sounds at all, select No Sounds from the Sound Scheme dropdown list.

This process is essentially the same in XP and Vista too. The Vista and Windows 7 startup sounds aren’t so bad, but the XP startup noise can be very annoying especially if you’re in class or a meeting.