2023-11-09 - Turn Off System Sounds In Windows 11

 This is a quicky, but one that has been annoying me for years. Every time Microsoft gets it's greasy fingers on your computer environment, they change a whole bunch of your preferred settings back to what they want instead of what you want. Not very customer friendly. I'm not a Linux guy, even if I can appreciate Mac, Linux and Windows different approaches, we have to pay for Windows to give us things we specifically don't want, and so I am sort of rooting for Linux or some other OS to take Windows' place. And as soon as that happens you'll get PC's that cannot take any other installation other than Windows.  

Anyway, so changing our system sounds up from a mute or a very low, non-heart-attack inducing volume is one of those things Windows resets to their liking about every month or something like that. I did find something online that could help with this. I have to wait and see if it stands the test of a Windows update reconfiguration. 

But if you go to C:\Windows\System32 > click on SndVol.exe > click on the System > go to the dropdown menu and select "No Sounds" Sounds icon > then click apply. This worked on my Windows 11 laptop. Alternatively, when I clicked on the same file in the system32 folder, the Volume Mixer just came up as can be expected, so just click on the icon of the device you want to mute, in this case the System Sounds icon, this will bring up the Sounds window where you'll find the same dropdown menu to select No Sounds. Click Apply. 

This stops any un-muting or volume change for system sounds. It does of course do more than stop the volume from changing away from a low volume and instead disables the function altogether. However, after about ten years, I finally realized I had zero needs or desires to hear system sounds. 

And being an audio guy, I have all my electronics connected to a mixer, funneling to my audio system, and I have the knobs and faders all set to the setting I prefer according to the devices that use those channels on my mixer, so only moderate volume changes from the devices themselves are needed beyond that. But when Windows reconfigures the volume to full and my knobs are set a certain way, I'll be sitting pretty in my room, while quietly working on my computer most times, when all of the sudden a blaring bell ringing noise bursts from all directions of my my surround sound system and scares the crap out of me. 

So congratulations Microsoft, the beginning of me losing interest in your product is finding the need to download all sorts of tools and utilities that change Windows to function the way I want rather than what others decide for me.

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