When you power on your Windows PC, the first thing it does is play the startup sound. If you forget to turn down the volume before shutting down your PC, then it is going to play a loud startup sound as your switch it on. This may become especially awkward at work as you would be distracting everyone by playing your loud volume sound. A solution for this problem is to use free Auto Mute program which automatically turns off your system sound at events like shutdown, startup and logon.
You can download the Auto Mute program from their website. The download is in form of a setup installer. After the installation, you can launch it from its desktop or Start Menu shortcut. It shows up the settings window on the first run.
In the settings window of Auto Mute, you can choose to run it automatically on Windows logon and show icon in the notification area. There are options to mute sound at logoff, sleep, shutdown, startup. You can also choose to mute your PC when its locked or when screen-saver is active. You can also specify a hotkey to manually turn on/off the sound. By default the hotkey is Ctrl + F10.
Auto Mute stays in your notification area (system tray) and keeps showing the sound status (if it has been set to be muted or not). If the system is not set to be muted, then it shows a speaker icon with green checkmark. If the system is set to be muted, then it shows a speaker icon with red cross.
So if you are constantly forgetting to turn down your volume after watching a movie or playing loud music, then you can try Auto Mute. It can save you from feeling embarrassed the next morning when you power on your PC at work or in public.
You can download Auto Mute from http://auto-mute.com/.