If you want to hear audio cues for events in Windows—the closing of a program or the arrival of new e-mail, for example—you can assign sounds to those events. Windows Vista comes with a predesigned sound scheme that you can use, or you can create your own customized audio cues.
Tip
You can also open the Sound dialog box by right-clicking the Volume icon on the taskbar and choosing Sounds from the shortcut menu that appears.
Tip
You might or might not have numerous sound schemes available, depending on what other software you’ve installed, on whether the computer was upgraded from a previous version of Windows, or on whether someone else has created sound schemes on your computer. If you have only the one default Windows scheme, why not create a sound scheme of your own?
Click the Start button, type sound in the Search box, and click Sound to display the Sound dialog box.
On the Sounds tab, click an event to which you want to assign a sound.
Click a sound in the Sounds list, or use the Browse button to find a sound in another folder. Click None in the Sounds list to remove a sound from an event.
Use the Test button to preview the sound. Continue to select events and assign the sounds you want.
If you want to assign a unique name to the sound scheme, click Save As, enter a name for the sound scheme you’ve created, and click OK.
Tip
Several programs can control whether a sound is played when an event occurs. For example, if you’re using Windows Mail, choose Options from the Tools menu, and, on the General tab, select or clear the check box for playing a sound. If you’re using the On-Screen Keyboard, choose Settings, and specify whether you want to hear a clicking sound whenever you click a key.