When you press the power button on your Windows PC, it starts to work and then in a few seconds you see the familiar Windows logo. When the Windows desktop has loaded, you might hear the Windows startup sound. This sound is played each and every time you start Windows PC.
In the older versions of Windows, this startup sound used to much longer in duration and kept playing for 5-6 seconds. But the in the newer versions of Windows including Windows 10 and Windows 11, the startup sound has become very small in duration and plays only for just 1-2 seconds.
If you want to remedy this situation and change the startup sound to something other than the stock Windows sound, then you can make use of the freeware application Startup Sound Changer. Originally designed for Windows 7, it continues to work for the newer version of Windows. At the time of writing this, we tested it with the latest version of Windows 11 and it worked as expected.
The user interface of Startup Sound Changer is very straightforward. You can test the current startup sound by clicking on “Play”. If you want to change the sound then you can click on “Replace” and choose a WAV audio file. And finally if you want to restore the default sound for Windows startup then you can click on “Restore”. For closing the application we can click on “Exit” or click on the “X” mark near the top-right corner.
If you are having difficulty finding a suitable audio WAV file for setting as the Windows startup sound on Windows 11, then you can find all the startup sounds for all the versions of Windows (from Windows 3.1 to Windows 11) on https://www.winhistory.de/more/winstart/winstart_en.htm. This page allows downloads of these startup sounds and shutdown sounds in the WAV or MP3 file format.
You can download Startup Sound Changer from https://winaero.com/startup-sound-changer/.