[ # ] How to Disable PC Speaker and Windows Beep

/* Posted September 26th, 2008 at 10:41am */
/* Filed under How-To, Windows */

If you prefer cygwin over the DOS shell on your PC like me, you’ll soon find yourself constantly being irritated by the Windows beep that gets triggered every time you press the tab button to autocomplete anything in the console. The Windows beep I’m talking about doesn’t come from your audio, it’s from the internal PC speaker, the same thing you might here when your PC boots up. For whatever other reason you may have, should decide one day you need to disable the PC speaker, you can follow what I did.

Open up your system properties. I like to be cool and use the little known Windows-Pause/Break button combination to bring it up. Or if you can’t figure it out, just go to Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> System Properties.

Once the dialog is open, click on the “Hardware” tab.

Inside the “Hardware” tab, click on the “Device Manager” button. Yes, apparently the PC speaker is also a device. On the menu bar, click on View -> Show Hidden Devices. Then go down and look for the “Non-Plug and Play Drivers” and expand it. You will see the “Beep” driver not far down. Right click on it and select “Disable.” You will need to restart your PC for it to take effect.