Almost everyone is familiar with America Online's (AOL) famous line, "You have mail!" that is played when its users receive new E-mail messages. Windows NT provides users with the means to add sounds to a number of predefined events, including incoming E-mail messages. These events range from starting Windows NT to notifying users of a new incoming telephone call to their computer.

Setting up sounds is easy. Start by double-clicking the Sounds icon in the Windows NT Control Panel. You can manage Windows NT events and their associated sounds from the Sounds Properties dialog box. The first thing you will notice is the list of events in a box at the top of the window. This is where you select the event that you want to add a sound to or change the current sound associated with that event.

After the desired event is selected, you need to select the sound that you want to be played when the event occurs. Below the events window there is a pull-down menu that has a number of sounds that can be played. These sounds include rings, dings, and chimes, among others. You can scroll up and down until you find a sound that you think is fitting for the selected event.

If you are not sure whether or not a selected sound is exactly what you are looking for, you can sample the sound by pressing the Play button. If you want to remove sound from a given event, simply select None in the list of sounds. This will take away any association the selected event had with a sound file.

Once you find a sound you are happy with, you can select another event and repeat this process to set up several events, or if you are finished, you can click the OK button to close the dialog box.

Once you assign sounds to the events you want, you can save your settings. These settings are called a Scheme or Sound Scheme. Windows NT ships with a few different sound schemes for you to try out and play with. To load a sound scheme, select the pull-down menu in the Schemes section.

When you select a scheme, preselected events are automatically associated with corresponding sounds. The sounds in a sound scheme are usually a group of similar sounds associated with a group of events. These sound schemes can actually be whatever sound associations you like the best.

For example, Windows NT comes with a sound scheme called "Robotz" that assigns interesting mechanical sounds to a small selection of Windows events. With this scheme loaded, minimizing an application window adds a sound sort of like a space ship door closing out of a cheesy science
fiction movie.

And, of course, maximizing an application sounds like a space ship door opening. If you wanted, you could change the sound of the window minimize event from the "Robotz minimize" to a phone ringing sound. All of the other "Robotz" sound events would remain the same.

You could then save this new Sound Scheme with a different name by clicking Save As in the Schemes window and giving it a unique name. If you decide that you dislike a sound, and you will never use a specific sound scheme again, you can simply select it in the "Schemes" window and press the Delete button. This will remove the selected scheme from your system for good.

If you want to be creative and use sounds other than the standard stock Microsoft sounds, you can use any sound you want that is in the wave file format or .WAV. Below the pull-down window containing the names of sounds is a Browse button. This allows you to browse to your favorite sound files on your computer.

If you don't have many sounds loaded on your machine, try downloading some from the Internet. There are plenty of sites out there that have free sound files for download. If you are having trouble locating them, just go to your favorite search engine and type in wav sound in the search criteria field. This should produce enough sites with sound files to fill your machine with tons of different sounds, ranging from animal noises to clips from your favorite television show.

Even though using sound can be fun, you need to be careful when adding sounds to Windows NT events. A few sounds here and there can be entertaining. Try to keep the sounds that you use rather short. A .WAV file that takes few minutes to play can get annoying after a period of time. Use sound to spice up your Windows NT experience, but try not to get carried away. Too many sounds and sounds that take forever to play will distract you from your work.

by Kimberly Maxwell and Scott Jones