Joe Wilcox doesn’t understand the fuss over the Windows Vista startup sound:
I’m baffled by all the significant chatter over something as seemingly insignificant as the Windows Vista startup sound. For anyone that missed it, Microsoft plans to have Windows Vista emit a distinctive chime when the system is booted up and ready for login or use.
Microsoft’s Steve Ball gave Robert Scoble some reasons for the startup sound, which as of current planning cannot be turned off: 1) “A spiritual side of the branding experience. A short, brief, positive confirmation that your machine is now concious and ready to react”; 2) “The startup sound is designed to help you calibrate or fix something that got out of wack when you startup your machine.”
First, let’s be clear that we’re talking about the startup sound, the one that plays when your computer turns on, not the logon sound that plays when you enter your credentials to access your account. The problem is that the startup sound is not customizable. It’s hard-coded into a system DLL. OK fine, but a side effect of that is that the sound can’t be turned off. And that’s wrong, wrong, wrong. The user should always have the ability to turn this sound off. Here’s why:
Imagine you’re a reporter and you’ve just entered the briefing room for a major announcement from a politician. You open your notebook, and here comes the Windows startup sound, blasting away. You could get thrown out of the briefing room for that.
Or this scenario: You and your spouse are staying in a hotel and you have to get up early to do some work. You slip out of bed quietly, to avoid waking her up, turn on the computer and the sound comes blasting out. A bad way to start the day.
Or you’re a student and you sneak into class five minutes late. Do you really want your computer to announce your late arrival? For that matter, is the world a better place when that damn sound plays 20 times as 20 students turn on their computers at the start of class?
If Microsoft wants to create a mystical branding experience with Windows, fine. If a hardware maker wants to slap stickers all over a new computer, that’s fine too. Just give me the right to remove or change that sound, in the same way that I can remove those stickers.
Let’s delay the Vista release even longer trying to make yet another group of vocal people happy.
One simple “make it configurable” type switch often leads to many many hours of meetings, development, testing, etc, not to mention any longer term support costs that go with providing a new “setting”. All which take away from other projects and fixing bugs, like maybe hibernation problems like Ed is experiencing.
If you want ultimate configurability, build and compile your own version of Linux. The vast majority of PC (and Mac) owners aren’t interested in that. They want and expect some basic personalization, but beyond that most people are quite content.
I leave the sound on my laptop off at all times. I turn it on only when I specifically need it, that way I can normally not worry about random sounds playing at inopportune times. I can’t believe others who are commonly in potentially sound-sensitive environments like myself don’t do the same.
If you’re laptop doesn’t provide that functionality for whatever reasons — sorry you own/use that laptop. You’ll need a new laptop to run Vista anyway …
“Imagine you’re a reporter and you’ve just entered the briefing room for a major announcement from a politician. You open your notebook, and here comes the Windows startup sound, blasting away. You could get thrown out of the briefing room for that.”
Well, you’ll just have to turn to use “Sleep” or “Hibernate” and not “Shut down” won’t you. On XP I’d go months at a time without doing a full boot. Since joining my domain I’ve done one reboot since installing vista and that was to prove that this boot sound nonsense is true.
As you said, Ed, it’s “not the logon sound that plays when you enter your credentials to access your account” and there is no “come back from hibernate or sleep sound”, or if there is it go muted with everything else.
The reason for the new sound is obvious, guys: on the average PC, Vista will likely take ten minutes or more to come up, and this way you’ll hear it under the shower.
I must say I’m baffled by all the knee-trembling you geeks get out of Vista – is this the second coming of the Lord?
As a user I have no desire to go near Vista anytime soon and I suspect I’m one of millions who feel the same way.
It’s taken me 5 years to get XP to run well on my 2 computers, with the aid of a bunch of essential third-party utilities and several hardware upgrades.
After pouring a lot of sweat and dough into it, XP now does everything I want, works fast and is stable. I’m not about to trade those features for a new look and a fancy new chime. I’ll let you guys spit the pips out of Vista, and there’ll be truckloads of those. Remember, it took MS 3 years (SP2) to make XP what it should’ve been in the first place.
Microsoft’s biggest problem will be to convince punters like me to upgrade to Vista. Years from now MS will treaten to withdraw support for XP and we will laugh. Did someone say Support? We’ll laugh some more.
I can now look forward to years of stable computing, unhindered by frequent humungeous updates from MS and all the wobblies that go with them, since MS will be too busy fixing Vista to fiddle with XP.
Briard
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Hehe, sorry, could not resist.
Want to disable that startup sound permanently?
Open registry editor and go to
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ServiceGroupOrder]
Look for “AudioGroup” and move it to the bottom of the list!
This little registry hack works great for me!
The startup sound can’t play because the “Windows Audio Service” isn’t started until every every other service has started.
“spiritual side of the branding experience”
That’s special Steve Ball! You’re an OxyMoron!
Sidenote: I’m trying out Ubuntu 6.06 and it makes a pre-login sound as well. Much shorter than the Vista one. Haven’t looked into if that can be turned off.
It can be turned off. Go to System –> Administration –> Login Window, click the Accessibility tab, and uncheck the “Login screen ready” sound. Those instructions are for Edgy (6.10) but Dapper should work similarly.
I’d like to know the same fix for XP Pro. Can’t eliminate the sound which plays (simultaneously with any other sound which may be on in Control Panel) at startup. I can’t find the file – it isn’t in C\Windows\Media – so I assume it’s in the registry somewhere. Anyone know what to do?
one better point is that if you leave YOUR sound off, that means it is just your sound, your profile. not the system sound our that of every possible user, so in that it gets played every time. if MS decides to make it play every time , it will play every time. the only thing that will likely help will be the jack solution.
As to the comment ‘it is an all or nothing situation’, sorry after logging in I can choose to play ‘metallica’ i don’t have to, I too can choose to mute my system with a button that only works after start-up.
and yes please delay vista one more year (as if) to make it more customizable (even start-up screen) should never taken 18 months to get it in anyway. they had better taken that time to make a decent product, without stupid eye & ear candy. I just want a stable and preformant machine. And not have to spend most of my power on the OS. The OS should be as stable and less needed as possible all the rest should be tunable.
And no I’m not a linux nor mac user