That's it! Enabling or disabling the new email sound notification in Windows Vista literally takes a couple clicks. From there on, Windows Vista will be completely silent (except for Windows Vista's startup sound, a setting control with its own checkbox). If you do not want Windows Vista to play any sound at all, you can disable all sounds completely by choosing " No Sounds" from the Sound Schemes drop-down menu. You can follow the same procedure to disable any event sound in Windows Vista: simply set to "(None)" all the sound events you no longer want to hear. If the new email sound annoys you, you can disable it alone by picking "(None)" under the Sounds drop-down. If you would like to use an MP3 file you have for email sound, simply search the web for a MP3 to WAV converter… Disable the Email Sound in Windows Vista The next time new emails arrive in Outlook, Windows Mail or Windows Live Mail, Windows will play the WAV audio file you choose. Once you have found the email notification sound you like, click Ok. Unfortunately, Windows Vista does not let you pick other audio formats for Windows event sounds: To change the new email sound, click the Browse button to pick another sound file: you can either use one of the WAV files that come bundled with Windows Vista (located by default in the C:\Windows\Media\ folder), or pick any other WAV file. Scroll through the alphabetical listing of Windows sounds until you see " New Mail Notification" by default, the new email sound in Vista uses the " Windows Notify" WAV sound file.Ĭlick the Test button to preview the current sound. Many email programs will use their own internal settings for email sounds, but email clients created by Microsoft (like Microsoft Office Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, and Windows Live Mail) will all use the New Email Notification sound specified by your settings in Windows Vista or Windows XP. The New Email Notification sound is a particular case of event-triggered sounds in Windows. When Vista's Sound dialog opens, click on the Sounds tab. Configuring Sounds and Sound Schemes in Windows Vista If you are using the Classic Start Menu (and have chosen to expand the Control Panel), going to Settings > Control Panel > Sound will directly open the Sound dialog. Click it, and the Windows Vista's Sound dialog will open. The second set of filtered options and settings, labeled Sound, contains a link labeled " Change system sounds". Locate the Search box in the top right corner of the Control Panel and type "sounds". To configure or setup Windows Sounds, click the Windows Start button and click Control Panel. If you change hkcu:\AppEvents\Schemes\Apps to hkcu:\AppEvents\Schemes\Apps\.Default it should only remove sounds for the Windows group listed in the sound settings and not any of the other apps.Configuring the New Email Sounds in Windows VistaĪll sound settings in Windows Vista are managed from the Control Panel sounds, including the new email sound, are enabled by default. go to HKEYCURRENTUSER/AppEvents/Schemes/Names. If you really want it then just head to registry editor. Let me know if you are interested in these schemes. Set-ItemProperty -Path $regkey.PSPath -name "(default)" -Value "" It also has reference of windows vista ultimate extra sounds but wont show up in schemes. $ThemeSounds = Get-ChildItem hkcu:\AppEvents\Schemes\Apps -Recurse | Get-ItemProperty (NOTE: you may want to backup the hkcu:\AppEvents\Schemes\Apps registry key first in case you want to recover the sounds later.
This Powershell script will remove all of the sounds assigned to each sound scheme so that they all are equivalent to the No Sound scheme. I had the same issue and tried using the "prevent changing sounds" Group policy setting, but whenever you change the theme it would change the sound scheme so that didn't really work.ĭeleting or renaming the folder sounds like one way to fix it, but I found that updating the registry to removing the sounds from all of the themes also works.