Win XP Startup/Shutdown Messages

[Stuey]

For some reason, my system now tells me what it's doing upon startup and shutdown. It says "playing startup sound" and "playing studown sound" and a few technical messages like something about group machine policy or something. I don't get it, why all of a sudden is Windows flashing these text notifications?

Recently I installed printer drivers and then uninstalled them, and I installed Windows Optimizer because I saw it mentioned in the daily tips. I un-optimized my system and then uninstalled it thinking it was the culpret, but now several restarts later, it's still doing it.

I'm running Win. XP Pro, SP2 with all updates. I login with a password but I am the only user on my system, and it is an administrator account.

So does anyone have any ideas as to how I can stifle these messeges or what prompted them to be enabled?

[Stuey]

I still cannot figure out what is going on. I checked the services, but nothing seems to fit the description. I mean, these aren't system "alerts" they're just notifications, I guess.

[Panama Red]

I've never seen written notices but many mobo's have Speech Post Reporter. With that active you'll hear a voice telling you what is happening during each step of the Post. Maybe check in your bios and see if there is some area for Post notification.

[Stuey]

Originally Posted by Panama Red I've never seen written notices but many mobo's have Speech Post Reporter. With that active you'll hear a voice telling you what is happening during each step of the Post. Maybe check in your bios and see if there is some area for Post notification.

There are no messages during POST though, it is only when I have the blue windows screen. Like, it says Windows Loging Off and then there will be other strings of notifications replacing that text. This only happens after I put in my login password as well, so I am fairly certain that it is Windows based. Also, I have not altered my BIOS in a while, and this is a new development. There is no way these messages were always present, I would have noticed.

[Stuey]

Oh C'mon... anybody? I REALLY don't want to do a reformat to fix it.

[cmillar6]

try doing a system restore to a time before the problem started happening.

[Statica]

Go to your registry editor (Start > Run > regedit)
Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system
Look at the right ... do you see something that says VerboseStatus?
If YES .. double click on it and change the value to 0 close and reboot
If NO .. right click on the right area and create a new > DWORD .. call it VerboseStatus and make its value 0.

HTH

[Stuey]

Statica, you ROCK! It worked! Although I'm curious as to what prompted that setting to be enabled all of a sudden.

[Statica]

Have you been playing with the group policy editor (Local Computer Policy > Computer Config > Admin Templates)? Or maybe you've got some program that "claims" to protect your system by letting you know whats going on and has written the registry key (things I hope will go away with Vista's LUA) .. I just bypassed you from looking for what you did and had you use the registry yourself (usually the best way).

Glad it helped & thanx for letting us know it did .. I somehow missed the thread before... Cheers

[Stuey]

I have no idea what happened. I installed the Windows Optimizer Utility, and Canon's driver software for a multifunction printer. I returned the printer and ordered a different one so I removed the drivers and when I rebooted, that's when I noticed the messages. Then I figured it must have been because of the Windows Optimizer but resetting its features and then uninstalling it didn't do set things right.

I play around with random stuff on my computer but I don't mess with the policies, templates, or services because despite the explanations Windows offers on-screen, I still have no idea what their individual purposes are.

Thanks again for the solution; somehow I run into the most obscure problems.