Windows Shutdown Sound Not Playing

SoverignDelta · 01 Jan 2022

Hello TenForums,

I have a bit of a problem regarding my computer not allowing a shutdown sound to play on either a clean shutdown, or on a restart. Reading other forum posts, some people suggest disabling fast boot and using Task Scheduler and gpedit.msc. I have tried all these by using either a .vbs script in Tash Scheduler, or a Powershell script in the shutdown script using:

(New-Object Media.SoundPlayer 'C:\Windows\Media\melogoff.wav').PlaySync();

My changes to startup, lock workstation and unlock workstation all play their part (all three through gpedit.msc and their respectful scripts.) Its only the shutdown one that refuses to play.

I am using only .wav files for this and the startup sound option in the Sounds menu is ticked.

If anyone could help me with this it would be great.

Thanks.

Windows 10 Pro Build 19044

dalchina · 02 Jan 2022

Hi, this was explored a long time ago and no satisfactory solution found.
Effectively you'd have to halt the shutdown process for long enough for the sound to be played.

This is, I believe, a feature made obsolescent in the quest for faster shutdown, without a means to allow playing this sound as an option at the cost of slowing shutdown.

You will probably have seen something like this:
How to Play the Shutdown Sound in Windows 10

If it works, great.. but it may not.

Related to this would be the hardware required to play the sound, and at what point in the shutdown sequence that hardware is no longer active. (compare e.g. laptop speakers or wired headphones vs bluetooth speakers or headphones).

wiganken · 02 Jan 2022

The last time I allowed shutdown sounds to be played was around 1995. I found them annoying and have never missed them. I just want the PC to shutdown and I don't need a sound to tell me it is shutting down.

Why not consider disabling sounds and the problem goes away. Just a suggestion.

Windows Shutdown Sound Not Playing-no-sounds.png

SoverignDelta · 03 Jan 2022

Is there any way a program/script could be made to play the sound first then initiate the shutdown command?

MaloK · 03 Jan 2022

You can try to create a scheduled task to play the sound. That triggers on System info Event ID 1074 With a cmd line sound player like sounder.exe

I never tried it but... it should be easy.

SoverignDelta · 03 Jan 2022

Using Powershell at the moment (which I have never really dabbeld in before, I have from other assistance:

(New-Object Media.SoundPlayer 'C:\Windows\Media\melogoff.wav').PlaySync();

Is Powershell able to perform a shutdown script like a .bat file but including the above code line? Just to execute the equivlent shutdown.exe /s /t 00 after?

Again not to familiar with Powershell, the script is going through gpedit.msc.

MaloK · 03 Jan 2022

Yissssssshhh you would be forced to call your own routine to shutdown...

But you could use your PS script to play the sound in a task triggered at shutdown... it's the only time to do it before devices go down. And it would work from any requester software / user ...

idgat · 04 Jan 2022

wiganken said:

The last time I allowed shutdown sounds to be played was around 1995. I found them annoying and have never missed them. I just want the PC to shutdown and I don't need a sound to tell me it is shutting down.

Agreed. I find the Windows sounds system quite naff. They were originally intended in Windows 95 as a marketing identifying stunt ... everyone came to know "that" sound is Windows shutting down/starting up/error/etc etc. There were even a couple of records released with "tunes" put together by combining the Windows (95) sound system.

I'm pretty much sure most users consider those days are well and trully behind us, and we really don't need Microsoft's tingles and dingles and pingles, telling us what we already know we've just done.