There’s a lot of fuss about this idea of Microsoft’s to have a non-customisable, non-removable Windows Vista startup sound. That is, real startup, as the logon screen appears.
I reckon that’s one of the stupidest ideas they’ve had in a long time. At least nobody had to buy Microsoft Bob. At least you could (eventually) turn off Clippy. Not that anybody has to upgrade to Vista either, but you can bet it’ll be very difficult to get anything else on a new PC by this time next year, and not all of us want to migrate to Mac or Linux.
As Ed Bott says, there are lots of reasons you might not want an unstoppable sound when starting up the computer. Sometimes you just want the computer to be silent (there’s a reason some people disable sounds in web browsers) and you may not be able to get to the volume control/mute quick enough to shut it up. In fact, some speakers don’t have volume knobs; it’s all done within Windows, after you logon.
How many times in the past have you heard someone setting up Windows and it blaring out the startup sound during the first boot? Imagine that on every boot, and not adjustable. Bleuch.
If they go ahead with this plan, it’ll be just another reason for me to hold back and avoid upgrading… at least until someone works out a hack for it.
I have not read a lot about Vista yet (not like it’s going to be on time or anything) but from what I have read, there is not a lot to actually encourage me to upgrade. Hey – I only just put on SP2 for XP – let’s not rush these things!!!
Anyone want to give me a (even just mildly) compelling reason to upgrade? (Anyone other than Bill Gates please…)
Yeah. Certainly I held off until last year before I moved from the ol’reliable Win2K up to XP. I’m not clear yet on why Vista will be compelling… I can see it’ll be nicer, but compelling?
If we can’t adjust the sound settings, maybe we’ll be able to change the file played to a sound clip of dead air.
If the rumours are right, you won’t be able to mute, change volume or change the file played. It’ll be embedded in some DLL.
Open registry editor and go to
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ServiceGroupOrder]
Look for “AudioGroupâ€, move it to the bottom of the list, now the startup sound can’t play because the “Windows Audio Service†doesn’t start until all the other services have started!
This works great for me so far.
Don’t forget to export and save this key before changing it!!!!