Tired of your standard Windows Startup and Shutdown tunes?

If you’re like me, you use your Windows-based computer almost every day.  The startup and shutdown sounds have just gotten a little boring to be honest.  Here are some simple steps to use your favorite voice, music excerpt, or sound for your computer’s start-up and shutdown sequence.  You’ll need two soundbites.

Step 1. Choose the soundbites: Choose the track which you want to play at start-up and shutdown jingles.  Key to note:

  1. It must be in the .WAV format.
  2. The soundbite shouldn’t be too long otherwise you could be waiting for the bite to end before you begin computing.

Your preferred file is likely an mp3, but regardless, if its not in .WAV format, you can easily convert it using  any converter.  My preference is audacity, which is an open source music editor <– it allows you to actually select a “soundbite” from any song.

Step 2.   Rename the new files. Rename these files as “Windows XP Startup.WAV” and “Windows XP Shutdown.WAV” respectively.

Step 3. Rename the old files.

  1. Goto “C:\WINDOWS\MEDIA”
  2. Find the files “Windows XP Startup.WAV” and “Windows XP Shutdown.WAV”, and rename them to Windows XP Startup_old.WAV and  Windows XP Shutdown_old.WAV respectively. This step is required for the case if you need to revert back to these sounds, otherwise you can ignore this step and just delete them (not recommended).

Step 4. Save your new files. Just copy your files from step 2 into the directory “C:\WINDOWS\MEDIA”

You now have new startup and shutdown tunes.

Kerry enjoys writing about a variety of topics.  Her favorite website is CallCatalog.com which is a reverse phone directory website.  You can also read her blog which discusses phone number privacy issues.