On my laptop you can't turn off the speakers before Windows boots up, so unless I remember to mute them before I shut down windows the damn startup sound always plays, regardless of how I have it set in the control panel. Twice now I've forgotten, and when I turn my computer on in class the startup sound has played, loudly and embarrassingly. I hate the startup sound!So, what can I do to stop it from playing? I tried deleting the file in C:\Windows\Media, but I suspect it's actually stored elsewhere. I even searched for startup.wav in the registry and tried to alter any keys that included it, but to no avail. I know there's no official solution, so help me find an unofficial one!

Take a look here: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\MuiCache\1B0\16808F16. Before you make any modifications, make sure you backup this entire key in case something goes wrong. Actually, what I would do is create a temporary user and test. That way, if things get hosed up, you just delete the temp user. If that fails to fix your issue, you could just disable your sound card in Device Manager. That way, no sounds will play at all until you reenable the card.

No luck. I deleted every key related to Windows Startup (well, those that were in clusters of keys that were obviously for Windows sounds), and the startup sound still plays. Maybe if it wasn't so piercing ;)

Control Panel > Sound >In one of the tabs there is a control of some type to turn on/off startup sounds.

yeah I know -- that's the first thing I tried

Hi, Is it startup audio or logon audio? The logon audio can be changed from Control Panel. However, the startup audio cannot be changed or removed. This behavior is by design. Arthur Xie - MSFT

Aja27, That leaves you with only a couple of workarounds since mute is not doing what you want it to do. Disable the sound card in Device Manager Stop the Windows Audio service and set its startup type to Manual

having to disable my soundcard (windows audio) is even more impractical than having to remember to mute my speakers before I shut down.Although when I went into services.msc, I noticed that there's an option to set a service as "Automatic, delayed start". Seems like that might work if I set Windows Audio to start with delay, but when I try to set it I get an error message saying the flag could not be set.Looks like I'll just have to live with it; but why Microsoft is so insistent on irritating me every time I start the computer I don't understand. It's one of those terrible marketing ideas that sounds good to a committee but is actually quite stupid and shortsighted.(if one of the mods wants to pass that on the devs, I wouldn't complain) ;)