Windows 7: Startup System Sound Stopped Playing...

Found several similar reports over this and MS's Answers forums with no final resolution/fix to problem. Worse they are dated several years ago and nothing current.

I feel I need to emphasize one-time that this problem only concerns the Startup system sound that plays right after warm or cold boots when the system first arrives at the desktop and _only_ that sound. All other system and program sounds work okay.

Up to 1 or 2 months ago for a couple years now the Startup sound has been playing just fine--then I all of a sudden realized it was no longer playing at all. All other system and program sounds/audio play fine.

1. SFC finds nothing needing fixing.
2. Startup sound check box in Sounds tab is and has always been checked though I do not recall when MS made this a security issue protecting it.
3. Talked to nVIDIA and learned nothing new.
4. Talked to Crucial and learned nothing new.
5. Talked to MS and learned nothing new. They are unaware of problem...even though for some it is a couple years old. MS's best recommendation though, which I might still try at some point because "what could possibly go wrong?" is to run an In-Place Upgrade on Windows 7 which supposedly will restore the OS leaving my programs/data and some customizations(?) in tact.
6. Actual Startup sound wave file apparently resides inside a .dll which iirc is threaded here in sevenforums.
7. I also looked through the Registry searching for "startupsound" and found string instances but they all looked correct for '1' turning on the Startup and '0' for point not wanting the sound to play.
8. The sound driver I've been using is the one MS includes in the Windows 7 SP 1 Install disk. I checked for updates but there are none. I then uninstalled it, let the system reboot, and installed it again automatically.

Outside of possibly changing the Startup sounds to something else one might prefer I've found no mention of a fix or solution to this problem. In fact the threads seem to all hang in mid-air with no solution--not even a mention to use an In-Place Upgrade or to do a clean install. That's frustrating--that even a hard solution like a clean install couldn't have been mentioned.

I hope someone familiar with this issue can give me some good advice or a good procedure to follow regardless of what that process might be including editing in this .dll or in the Registry for something specific?

Thank you.

Welcome to Seven Forums Ratsneve.
Personally I would be thankful at losing the sound. I have all turned off.
But seriously, I don't know what the issue could be. The sound files reside here. C:\Windows\Media

Welcome to the Seven Forums.

What is the value of this setting?

if sound plays for system sounds and other apps (WMP -> mp3) then it's specific to windows startup sound. software or drivers won't fix what isn't broken.

sometimes just toggling a setting resolves an issue, but this might be Areo related.

Try changin your theme to Windows classic (a non Areo them)
then change sound scheme to 'no sounds' - make sure that windows startup sound is also unticked
save
reboot

start from the ground up - tick startup sound on the sound tab
save and reboot

at this point either the startup sound is working or it isn't
reset the windoes theme to what your prefer and reboot

Entered in error.

DisableStartupSound is set to 0. I thought this made sense. Checked several other searches for startupsound and those setting I thought were correct too. At this location I also looked at LogonSoundPlayed and both entries are set to 1 which still seems to make sense. Thank you for taking an interest in this--I'll keep looking at anything you suggest.

I'm going to work through the above again. Although I did it all once it did not include using a non-Aero theme and I meant to include it but didn't. Later on the results of this.

Process Monitor shows the sound to be a WAV file.

Click to get a light box of this image.
Click again to see it larger.


Do you have that file?

Does it manually play for you?

Ok, toggling the Aero theme might not be enough. It's the easiest and 'quickest' test though.

I think there's a tutorial about areo issues on seven forums. Go ahead and muddle through the chages/reboots and I'll look around and post what I find in tutorials.

edit: Nope, couldn't find one here - I might have missed it though. I'll see what else turns up.

OP was informed of sounds location in post #2.