Moving from Mac to Windows can sometimes be bewildering. Since I got my Dell laptop I have been annoyed on a daily basis by the PC speaker "beep" that the computer emits when the volume is changed. The beep is set to increadibly loud no matter the volume. This breaks quite a number of usability principles but also causes me to jump out of my chair when I'm in the middle of editing using headphones as not to disturb my colleagues, and without thinking decide to change the volume.
On Mac OS X the beep that is emitted correlates to the new volume that you set: turning down the volume emits a lower beep and turning up a higher. But not on Windows there the beep is always set to "blast your eardrums out" level (at least on the Dell that I have).
So today after doing the same mistake of changing the volume with headphones on I went searching for a solution and after reading some forum posts by self thought ninjas suggesting that I resort to registry hacking I finally found it.
Basically you need to go into the Device Manger in the Control Panel. Change the View to show all devices, click on the Non-plug and play- drivers and right click on the Beep (yes, that is the name of the device). There in the dialogue you can turn it off by disabling the device.
Surely, a master Information Architecht was used because I cannot even begin to comprehend how someone could have dreamt up such a usable solution.
Redmond I salute thee!
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