How do I change Windows sounds?

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Summary: Changing the sounds that Windows plays on certain events is easy - once you know where to look.

Changing sounds is fairly easy. As is often the case it's all about knowing where to look.

Let me show you with a short video.

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Transcript

Hey everyone, I'm Leo Notenboom

Today we're going to take a look at a question a reader submitted "How do I change the sound when I receive an email" ... They're using Outlook Express 6 and the sound isn't loud enough.

Sounds are kinda fun in Windows and you can do all sorts of interesting things with them if you know where to look.

So our journey into sounds begins where many things do: in Control Panel.

In Control Panel, click on "Sounds, Speach and Audio Devices" and then click on "Sounds and Audio Devices". In the resulting pop-upa click on "Sounds" and now you'll find a whole list of "Program Events".

If you scroll down in that list one of those events is called "New Mail Notification". When you click on that you'll see that there's a sound listed, and if you play it you get that sound.

Now that also means that if you like you can change it - anything from the pre-defined list - or, you can go off and scout for your own.

In my particular case I have a few sounds of my own that I like to play instead. Everything from a simple coconut ... to Mr. Worf.

Once you select the sound that you want to hear on that particular event you can just hot OK, and in fact it now lists that as, in this particular case the New Mail Notification item.

Another area that sound get to be kind of annoying is down here in something called Windows Explorer, Start Navigation.

I have it set to coconut ... and that's the sound I hear every time I move from one web page to another in Internet Explorer.

Yes, Internet Explorer. Even though this says Windows Explorer this is the sound that gets played every time you load a new page in Internet Explorer.

Quite often, then thing people really want to do is set that to (None).

Now, before we hit OK on this we're going to want to save the Sound Scheme.

What that does is it saves all of the sounds and all of the settings that are associated with the settings down below.

What that also means is that if you want to change them to the Windows Default later, you simply can. Once again New Mail Notification is back to the Windows sound.

Or I can switch back to my own settings and Windows New Mail notification is back to our friend Mr. Worf.

Like I said, sounds are fun, sounds can be interesting and sounds can be very annoying.

Have fun with it!

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Article 10954 | Posted November 25, 2006