Make Messages Get Your Attention

When your computer performs a time-consuming task--such as sorting a large database or backing up--you may leave it to its work, only to find on your return that the process stopped as your machine waited for you to respond to an error message or other prompt. Luckily, it's simple to make Windows get your attention.

Start by opening Control Panel: In Windows 9 x, Me, and 2000, choose Start, Settings, Control Panel.

In Windows XP, select Start, Control Panel (if Control Panel is in Category view, click Sound, Speech, and Audio Devices).

Now click or double-click the Sounds, Sounds and Multimedia, or Sounds and Audio Devices icon, depending on your version of Windows.

With the Sounds tab selected, choose one of the items in the Events, Sound Events, or Program Events list and make sure there is a sound associated with it in the Name drop-down list ('Sounds' in Windows XP).

Click the Play icon to test it. Be sure you can hear the Asterisk, Critical Stop, Default Sound (Default Beep), Exclamation, Program error, and Question sounds. In Windows XP, test the System Notification sound, which accompanies the balloon messages that pop up from the right side of taskbar. By default, it's a subtle bubble-popping sound, so you may want to change it to something more noticeable. Choose sounds for the other events as desired, then click the Save As button to preserve your scheme if you need to retrieve it in the future. Click OK.

If using sound to get your attention isn't an option, all is not lost. Return to Control Panel and click or double-click Accessibility Options. (In XP, you may have to click this link twice.) Choose the Sound tab and check Use SoundSentry (see FIGURE 4). This translates your alert sounds into visual flashes. If necessary, click the Settings button and choose the item to flash--the active window, the desktop, or the title bar (called the caption bar in this dialog box). Then click OK as needed.

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