Turning off ALL sound on a PC - incl. beeps

Bri

I use my laptop in the library daily and recently it's p!ssing me off that even when I have all sounds muted, the soundcard or whatever does it is making that loud 80's style beep sound when it gets hostile. Like if I havn't logged in (XP) and I click anywhere off the password box. BEEP!

Anyway to silence this thing?

DonkeyStyle \o/

There shouldn't be system beeps normally, it's probably playing a beep from the system speaker because the sound hardware is disabled. (is it?)
I'd say turn the sound hardware back on, but just set the system event sounds for each event to 'none' in the 'Sounds and audio devices' control panel applet.
Or if you're feeling adventurous, you could perhaps physically disconnect the system speaker from inside the laptop.
That is unless the system speaker is wired directly or indirectly to the normal multimedia speakers that are built into the laptop.
And doing this will probably fudge your warranty, but like I said... if you feel adventurous and don't think you'll make a balls of it

Bri

Ok I roughly get what your saying!

I simply mute the taskbar sound icon (as I use the laptop normally at home too I don't wanna physically disconnect or even uninstall anything). I also have windows set to no sounds for sound scheme.

That's all.

So am I right in saying the beep is a side-effect of this muting and a simple case of tough shlt.

Thanks for the help.

DonkeyStyle \o/

Well as far as I know, just from experience... windows will play a .wav for the event instead of a system beep while everything is setup to play wav's for events and sound hardware is enabled (etc).

So I'd say have a go at this...
Set up windows to play .wav's for each event, try it out so you can hear it, then instead of muting the sound completely, just turn the volume slider down all the way in the volume control app.
Might work

There might be a more clever way to do it... maybe there's a reg hack for it or something.

DonkeyStyle \o/

Actually, there's a "System Speaker" device in device manager... you could try disabling that and see if the sounds stop.
I can't try it out on my own PC because I've got my system speaker disconnected

Bri

Good idea. No need for a reg hack it's not the biggest issue in the world.

Thanks again.

DonkeyStyle \o/

Cool, let us know if it works... I'm curious now

Snowbat

If the laptop speakers mute when you connect headphones, you could pick up a suitable headphone plug in Maplin or Peats and leave that plugged in to kill the sound.

Bam: http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article05-017

DonkeyStyle \o/

annoyances.org wrote:

short of yanking the thing out of the computer (several users have written to say how truly satisfying this is).

Hehe, I can vouch for this... definitly worth the effort.

Cool idea about the silent wav file though.

Bri

Silent wav seems the only way to go (thanks for the other ideas though).


http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article05-017:
* Obtain and install TweakUI.
* Choose the General tab, and turn off the Beep on Errors option.

Strangely enough I already had this done before the problem started. i.e. It doesn't seem to work for me!

Odd, worked perfectly for me :eek: