Selecting sounds from Windows and playing them

Question

I have a WinForms app. This app has a Preferences section where the user will be able to select which sounds are played when an alert is being displayed.

Is it possible to have a combobox where the user can select from the Windows stored sounds such as "critical stop", "critical beep" and so on. These are found in the "Control Panel" >> "Sounds and Alerts" section.

Is it also possible to have a play button to test the sounds out?

Answer 1

You do not require any API to play system sounds just write code like this:

// Plays the sound associated with the Asterisk system event.
System.Media.SystemSounds.Asterisk.Play();

The SystemSounds class contains the following predefined system sounds:

• Asterisk
• Beep
• Exclamation
• Hand
• Question

All other sounds require you read the desired sound from the registry and play it with code like this:

SoundPlayer simpleSound = new SoundPlayer(@"c:\Path\To\Your\Wave\File.wav");