difficulty changing system sounds

[JBrannan]

I am having a wierd issue trying to change the Sounds on my computer. I
followed all the steps going through the Control Panel, and my target sounds
are .WAV files that will play just fine in Windows Media Player, but when I
try to preview them in the Sounds menu, or when I apply them, no sound is
played. Is there some security step I am missing, or some other issue that
might prevent Vista from using custom .WAVs as system sounds?

 

[Andre Da Costa[ActiveWin]]

Please take a look at the following tutorial:
http://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windowsvista/sounds.aspx

 

[Brian]

J,

I'd be looking very carefully at the exact nature of the .wav files you're
wanting to use as system sounds.

Are they perhaps quite large?

Are their audio properties quite different from built-in sounds available?
In other words, were they recorded at a much higher sampling rate than
usual?

Were they possibly converted from anotehr file format?

That's all I can think of. Let us know what you find out. That's always
helpful for future troubleshooting.

Brian

 

[AlexB]

There is a reason for that. MS is apparently trying to do away with .wav
format. This is my sneaky impression, don't quote me. What they did in Vista
is they changed it to .wma format. I think it is in terms of saving disk
space because wav files may be wasteful for many practical purposes.

As a result of that the old API sndrec32.exe disappeared. If you want to
play your wav files you've gotta copy it from XP which I did. Instead of
sndrec32.exe they put into Windows\system32 a new API: soundRecorder.exe. It
makes files in wma format. SoundRecorder.exe won't play wav and sndRec32.exe
won't play wma. I do have both APIs and can play both formats but I make all
new sound files now in wma.

I hope it helps.

 

[JBrannan]

Everything in the tutorial was what I already tried, what normally works when
I want to change my sound scheme. Just for some reason, the wavs I want to
use will not play through the Sounds menu when I click the Test button, and
won't play as System sounds when I save the sound scheme.

I tried converting them all to wma files, and the Sounds menu won't
recognize them. It only looks for wavs.

As for the size of the files I want to use, it varys from just over 20KB to
256KB (although I don't think I'll end up using that one if I get this to
work).

Sorry, no idea on compression rates and technical stuff like that, since I
downloaded them from a website.