Change Windows 11’s start-up sound

There’s something delightfully nostalgic about listening to old Windows start-up sounds on YouTube. My favourite is Brian Eno’s ambient masterpiece for Windows 95, especially when it’s slowed down by 4,000 per cent to create four minutes of meditative bliss – hear for yourself at www.snipca.com/40827. “This is literally the soundtrack of heaven”, enthuses one commenter. Windows XP’s tinkly fanfare is also a classic, though Windows 7’s cheery jingle now sounds rather hollow to my ears. This trip down system-memory lane made me realise that my Windows 11 laptop doesn’t play a start-up sound, but boots in stony silence as if it isn’t pleased to see me at all.

“Windows 11’s ‘bing bong’ sounds like someone tentatively testing a steel drum”

Determined to bring some audio fun back to my operating system, I resolved not only to make Windows 11 pipe up but also to have it play the noise of my choice. But first I needed to work out why it was currently silent.

I right-clicked the volume icon on the taskbar and chose ‘Sound settings’, then clicked ‘More sound settings’. On the Sounds tab, I saw that ‘Play Windows start-up sound’ was ticked – so why wasn’t it working? I also discovered that Windows 11 doesn’t let you change the sound, unlike previous versions of the OS, because Windows Logon is no longer listed as a customisable ‘program event’, even though archaic options like New Fax Notification still are.

I decided to address the missing sound problem first, which – according to a quick web search – was because I had Fast Boot enabled on my laptop. To check this, I opened Control Panel, clicked ‘System and Security’ then Power Options followed by ‘Choose what the power buttons do’. The ‘Turn on fast start-up’ option was indeed selected, but also greyed-out, so I clicked ‘Change settings that are currently unavailable’, unticked the box and clicked ‘Save changes’.

Now it was time to restart my computer and hear what lovely audio welcome Windows 11 had lined up for me. Which turned out to be a gentle ‘bing bong’, like someone tentatively testing a steel drum while trying not to wake the neighbours, followed by a ghostly synth chord. Nice enough, but without the spine-tingling wonder of, say, Windows 98’s start-up sound. This wouldn’t suffice as a way to start my working day, but how was I supposed to change the noise when Windows 11 wouldn’t let me?

The answer was to download a free program called Startup Sound Changer ( www.snipca.com/40833), which overrides the default start-up sound with one of your choice. Though no longer maintained by its developer, it works in any version of Windows, from 7 to 11.

Next, I headed to the brilliant BBC Sound Effects library ( www.snipca.com/40830), which offers more than 33,000 audio clips you can download and use for free, for “non-commercial, personal or research purposes”. I searched for futuristic (as Windows 11 is supposed to be forward-looking), filtered the results by duration to keep the sound under 10 seconds and got 39 results, including ‘electronic bubbles’, ‘sliding door’ and ‘descending projectile’ ( www.snipca.com/40865). I downloaded the latter in WAV format (see screenshot below left) and extracted the effect from its ZIP file.

I opened Startup Sound Changer, clicked Replace (see screenshot above) and located and selected the BBC Sound Effects file. I clicked Play to preview it, then restarted my laptop to hear if it had been applied. Amazingly, it had, and Windows 11 now starts up to the sound of something probably created by the Radiophonic Workshop. I’m sure I’ll quickly grow tired of this, but the BBC site has thousands of other options to choose from and Startup Sound Changer makes them easy to apply. Or I can just click Restore to go back to Windows 11’s boring bing-bong.

Need help with your Windows start-up sounds? Let us know: noproblem@computeractive.co.uk

Next issue: Robert tries to turn an old PC into a Chromebook ■