Sounds and Multimedia

When the first Macintosh user figured out how to produce rude sounds from a computer, PC users were positively pea-green with envy—but not for long. Soon the PC could produce an equally appalling array of noises. Today, the technology has gone much farther; now your PC can also play music and videos, which can be as pleasant as you want them to be. This applet sits at the hub of your PC's audio and visual features.

Sounds Tab

As you may have noticed, Windows plays a sound to accompany every error message. These sounds are generally innocuous beeps or clicks. Using the Sounds tab, you can get rid of the existing sounds, change them around, or set up sounds to play when triggered by all kinds of other Windows events: opening or exiting a program, opening a menu, restoring a window, and so on. Once the Sounds tab is open, follow these steps:

  1. In the Sound Events box, highlight the system or program event to which you want to assign a sound.

    The speaker icon indicates events that already trigger sounds.

  2. Use the Name drop-down menu to select the sound that you want to play when the event occurs.

    Click the triangular Play button to listen to a preview of the sound.

    If the sounds that you want to play aren't listed, click Browse to locate the sound files on your computer or network, or select a different sound scheme (set of preassigned sounds) from the Scheme drop-down menu.

Where the sounds are

When you click the Browse button, Windows opens the C:→WINNT→Media folder, which contains the WAV files that provide sounds. If you drag WAV files into this Media folder, they become available for use as Windows sound effects.

Tip

The World Wide Web is bursting with sound files. Search for WAV files using any search engine, and be prepared to waste many fun-filled hours with sound bits from famous movies, catch phrases of TV characters, music clips, and sound effects of all kinds. You can have Dirty Harry demanding that you "Make my day!" when you boot up in the morning. Or hear Juliet declaim, "Goodnight, sweet prince…" when you log off.

Sounds schemes

You can save an entire set of sound/event pairings as a custom sound scheme, or modify an existing scheme and save it. When your nerves are frazzled, for example, you might switch to a sound scheme named Silence is Golden, in which every available system or program sound is turned off.

Audio Tab

The Audio tab is where you select your preferred audio devices. If you, like most people, have only one sound card and microphone, you'll find this tab to be of little interest (although you can click Volume to play around with the volume settings, if it amuses you).

Hardware Tab

You can use the Troubleshoot and Properties buttons to troubleshoot sound problems. As a first step, click a device's name in the list to see if it's "working properly."

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