I often use my home computer when other members of my family are asleep. I usually mute the volume before I boot up or shut down, but if I forget, or if the computer crashes, the whole house hears it. Is there any way to hush Windows automatically?

Andrew Hobbs, Raleigh, North Carolina

Windows doesn't offer silent boot-ups as a feature, but some workarounds and utilities can overcome this limitation. Here are some of my favorite tricks and tools to keep your PC on the QT, and for managing your PC's sound in general.

The hardware way: The easiest way to silence your computer before it starts making noise is by turning down the volume on your speakers; or, if you can plug your sound system into a power strip with individual on-off switches, just cut the juice to the speakers before booting up.

Unfortunately, neither option is available for notebook computers or for many desktop systems. Some computers let you disable sound by entering the setup screen during boot-up and before Windows loads. Of course, you usually have to reboot and reenter setup to undo this.

Mute on start-up: For many people, a freeware sound-muting utility is a better solution. After I complained in the August 2001 issue about Windows' lack of a mute key, Christian Klukas of Magdeburg, Germany, created the Mute and SetVol freeware programs to address this need. Both programs are available at January's downloads page.

Place the programs in the folder of your choice. To mute Windows' start, right-click the Start button, choose Open, double-click Programs, and then double-click Startup to open the Startup folder. Use Explorer or click Start, Search ( Start, Find in Windows 9 x) to locate the mute.exe file. Right-drag this file to the Startup folder, and choose Create Shortcut(s) Here. Then Alt-double-click the shortcut (or right-click and choose Properties) to open its Properties sheet. With the Shortcut tab in front, click the Target box. Move the cursor to the end of the existing command line, and type a space followed by the desired command-line switches--in this case on -delay. When you're finished, the command line should look something like "C:\Program Files\mute.exe" on -delay (see FIGURE 1). Then click OK. This keeps Mute active so that whenever you log off or exit Windows, the sound is muted.

Though Mute takes merely 1.5KB of RAM, you may not want the program to sit in memory all the time. To prevent this, delete '-delay' from the Target box of the shortcut. This will mute your sound when Windows starts, after which Mute will exit and take no more memory. However, Windows will still play its start-up sound before it launches applications in the Startup folder (including Mute), so you won't get a completely silent start-up. You can fix that by choosing Start, Settings, Control Panel, Sounds (in Windows 9 x) or , Sounds and Multimedia (in Windows 2000 and Me). Select the Sounds tab (in Windows 2000 and Me), scroll down the Sound Events list, and select Start Windows. In the Name drop-down list, choose (None). If you have several other applications that launch at start-up, you may need to repeat this step for the Open Program and Close Program sounds as well. When you're done, click OK.

If you want only an occasional quiet start-up, use Mute with the '-delay' switch but launch the shortcut manually rather than putting it in your Startup folder.

Mute on shutdown: You can also activate Mute from an application designed to launch programs when Windows exits. A couple of these programs are described in this month's Windows Toolbox.

The taskbar icon: Once you've muted your PC, you can un-mute it by clicking the speaker icon in the tray area (near the clock). When the Volume control appears, uncheck the Mute check box. To re-mute it, repeat these steps and check the Mute check box. If you don't see the speaker icon, open the Control Panel and double-click the Multimedia icon in Windows 9 x or Sounds and Multimedia in Windows Me or 2000. Check Show volume control on the taskbar, and click OK. In Windows XP's Control Panel, click Sounds, Speech, and Audio Devices, then Sounds and Audio Devices. Check Place volume icon in the taskbar, and click OK.

Quick Launch: It may take several seconds for the Volume control to appear when you click the taskbar sound icon. To solve that, you can use the Mute utility to toggle your sound on and off, or use the SetVol utility to set a specific volume level with a single click of an icon in the Quick Launch toolbar of the Windows taskbar.

To create an instant mute button, click Start, Search (or Start, Find in Windows 9 x) to locate mute.exe, and then right-drag the file to the Quick Launch bar and choose Create Shortcut(s) Here. The resulting Mute icon toggles sound on or off with one click. For a volume-changing icon, do the same for setvol.exe. Then right-click the SetVol icon in the Quick Launch bar and choose Properties. At the end of the Target command line under the Shortcut tab, type a space followed by -10. Next, create another SetVol shortcut with a command-line switch of +10. Click the first one each time you want to lower the volume by 10 percent and the second to increase the volume by 10 percent. You can use any number in increments of 10. If you omit the plus or minus, the volume is set at that precise percentage (in this case, 10 percent).

To give the new icons descriptive tool tips that pop up when the pointer hovers over each, right-click an icon and choose Rename. Type the description of your choice and click OK (Windows 98 SE and later). For earlier Windows versions, right-click an empty part of the Quick Launch toolbar and choose Open, then rename the icon with the tool tip text you prefer (see FIGURE 2).

Keyboard control: To toggle the sound on and off from your keyboard, create a shortcut for Mute and place it either on the desktop or in a folder in the Start Menu hierarchy. For this purpose, I recommend creating a folder called 'Keyboard Shortcuts' in the Start Menu\Programs folder. This makes it easy to find the shortcuts if you ever need to delete them or change their key assignments.

Right-click your shortcut and choose Properties. With the Shortcut tab in front, click the 'Shortcut key' box, and press the keys you want for toggling your system sound. If you select just a function key (one of the Fx keys at the top of your keyboard) or a key on the numeric keypad, you won't be able to use that key for anything else; instead, choose Ctrl, Alt, Shift, Ctrl- Alt, Ctrl- Shift, Alt- Shift, or Ctrl- Alt- Shift along with another key. And try to pick a combination that you don't use in another program (see FIGURE 3). Click OK. If you later delete this shortcut, you'll need to restart Windows before the key combination you chose becomes free again.

Compact audio controls: If you double-click the speaker icon on the taskbar, you will see a volume-control dialog box that includes balance controls and separate volumes for .wav sounds, CD audio, and more. (The precise appearance will vary with your system's audio drivers.) To make this dialog box more compact, press Ctrl-S (see FIGURE 4). It will keep this new, more svelte appearance until you reopen it and press Ctrl-S again.

Find more tips at our Heres-How page.

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