Just create a file that has the exact same name as the one in the Media folder and replace it. If you don’t like some of the other default Windows sounds, you can change them also in the same manner. Step 3: Now copy the two renamed files to the C: Windows Media folder and restart your computer! You should now hear the new audio play rather than the default sounds. This is just in case the two WAV files you created do not work and you want to revert back to the original sound.

Go ahead and move the two original files from the Media folder to some other backup folder. Here you will find the files Windows XP Startup.wav and Windows XP Shutdown.wav along with a bunch of other Windows sounds. Step 2: Now go ahead and navigate to the folder with the current startup and shutdown Windows sounds, which is C: Windows Media. Step 1: Rename each WAV file to Windows XP Startup.wav and Windows XP Shutdown.wav respectively. Let’s start with copying the audio files to the sounds directory. Windows XP Startup Sound There are two ways to go about changing the startup and other sounds in Windows XP: simple drag and drop into the appropriate folder or using the Control Panel. Try to keep the file size small, less than 1 MB if possible. If you have an MP3, you can convert it to WAV format easily using a free online tool like. Before we get into the details, you will first want to find an appropriate audio file in WAV format. I’ll go through each operating system below to make it as easy as possible depending on your OS. The Windows 95 startup sound is something special. After that, you have to run the third-party program and even after that, you have to shutdown and restart the computer in a certain way in order to actually hear the sound. In Windows 8, it gets worse if you miss your beloved startup sound because it’s completely disabled, so you first have to enable it in the registry. In Windows 7, you have to use a third-party program to change the startup sound because if you try via the Control Panel, it doesn’t do anything.

However, if you want to have your own custom startup and shutdown sounds in Windows, it’s possible. I never was a huge fan of the Windows startup or shutdown sounds, which is why I was so happy they were removed in Windows 8.

Windows xp startup sound wav