Disable Click Sound in Internet Explorer IE and Windows 7 x64 and x86

Windows 7 x64 and x86 have a default click sound which plays when you click on a link in Internet Explorer (IE) or when you navigate folders in Windows Explorer. This article will show you how to disable the click sound in Internet Explorer (IE) found in Windows 7.

Disable the Click Sound in Internet Explorer: An Introduction

As with previous versions of Windows, Windows 7 x64 and x86 come configured with default sounds, these can be for anything, an email landing in your inbox or in our case the annoying Click Sound in Internet Explorer (IE). The click sound in Internet Explorer (IE) is a nice distraction, however becomes quite an annoying distracting noise that quickly loses its novelty value.

In this article, I will show you how to disable the click sound or noise, depending on how long you've been putting up with it, in Windows 7 x64 and x86.

If you have Windows Vista, XP, 2000 or 98, check out our other article: Disable Click Noise in Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer for earlier Windows Versions

Disable Click Sound in Internet Explorer (IE) for Windows 7 x64 and x86

If you want to disable the click sound in Internet Explorer found in Microsoft Windows 7 follow these steps:

Click on the Start button on the Windows 7 menu bar
From the Start menu, click on Control Panel
On the Control Panel dialog, click on Hardware and Sound
On the Hardware and Sound dialog, click on Change system sounds
On the Sound dialog, use the scroll bar until you see the event titled: Start Navigation
Click on Start Navigation
From the Sounds dropdown select None
Click OK

That's it. Your Internet Explorer (IE) click sound should now be disabled.

But do remember that the changes made above will remove the click sound when clicking buttons and/or links on all web sites you visit - until you set it back. This is a safe change to make and does not affect any other functionality within the Internet Explorer browser.

Looking deeper into Windows 7 x64 and x86 Registry

Of course, the changes we just made were performed using the the GUI (Graphical User Interface). In reality our actions made some changes in the registry. So let’s have a look at what happens when we set the sound to (None) as we did in steps 1 through 8 above.

This is what the registry looks like when the sound is enabled:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\AppEvents\Schemes\Apps\Explorer\Navigating\.Current]
@="C:\\Windows\\media\\Windows Navigation Start.wav"

When we disable the sound using the steps above, the registry changes to:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\AppEvents\Schemes\Apps\Explorer\Navigating\.Current]
@=""

As you can see, it’s a simple string substitution with the path to the Windows Navigation Start .wav file.

Conclusion

In this article we have shown an easy way of disabling the click sound in Internet Explorer found in Windows 7 x64 and x86. The changes are made using the Control Panel and don't require any messy registry changes.