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Over Coming XP to get caught up.
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The startup sound wouldn't play unless I hit the show desktop button. "Why the hell is this happening?" So I look it up.
http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/29907-late-startup-sound.html
http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7music/thread/97030ea0-6b7c-4d8d-b078-5aafb1e00ba4
I followed the instructions and nothing. That irritates me. I hate it when I follow instructions and the exact opposite occurs. The worse part of it: I hate the start up sound! Really! So why bother? Because I want to change it to something I do like. But there's no point in changing the startup noise if it don't work.
I had given up on fixing it which was right after last weeks post, when the strangest thing occurred: the themed changed from Aero to Basic and the startup noise played. "Huh?" Is all I said for about a minute. As amazing as it might sound, a thought pooped in my head: "What if I changed from the solid color theme to the default theme?"
It worked. The noise played at startup. Tried several other of the themes, they all worked. But, not the solid colors I like to use. "Is it possible to changed the original desktop images?" It took some effort, because once more the search results brought of forums with dis-information. After awhile I did find the right folder and edit the original image to a solid color. Once again Microsoft in its infantile wisdom won't let me save back to that folder. So how do you replace that image?
Linux.
Pop in the disk and boot up from the disk. Go to the C drive and copy the new image over the old image. Restart to Win 7 and the sound plays just fine now.
But I still want to get rid of it. Of course I looked it up and in a rare fit of fact, I found the proper tool: ResHacker. I used it to change out the startup noise with one I like. Fired up Linux again and Viola. Remission accomplished. I now have the Windows 98 startup sound on Windows 7.
So, As near as I can figure it out, Sound Blaster probably had nothing to do with the missing startup sound. So let's blame Microsoft.