Q:

SystemSounds Play not working

I am trying to play the Asterisk system sound from a C# program with
System.Media.SystemSounds.Asterisk.Play();

but no sound plays.  My system does have a sound set up for Asterisk and other programs (not written by me) cause various system sounds to play.
Can anyone suggest any possible reasons for this?

A:

I had ignored this problem until today. Some googling revealed that this is quite a common problem and totally unrelated to the .NET Play calls.
What happens is that while you can play/preview the sounds from the Control Panel Sounds and Audio Devices applet they do not play when programs trigger the sounds. It seems to be corruption caused by program installations. The fix is quite simple.
The (Default) entry for HKEY_CURRENT_USER in the registry should be (value not set). If it is something else (mine was OfficeCompleted) delete the entry (right click and select delete) and it will be re-created as (value not set). The system sounds should then play.

