Can you still hear the Windows 95 startup sound in 2026?
Yes, and it costs nothing. The Internet Archive hosts the original Windows 95 system sounds as free downloads, and a separate item carries a high-quality stereo transfer released under a CC0 public domain dedication. The file to look for is named The Microsoft Sound.wav.
What you cannot do is get it from Microsoft. The company replaced Brian Eno's piece with a new startup sound in Windows 98 and has never shipped it again in a consumer release of Windows.
On a 1995 machine the file sat alongside Chimes, Chord, Ding and Tada, and it only played if the PC had a sound card installed. Plenty of office PCs in 1995 did not, which is why some people who used Windows 95 every day have no memory of the sound at all.
How Brian Eno got the job and what the brief asked for
Brian Eno is the English producer and ambient composer behind "Ambient 1: Music for Airports" and records by U2 and David Bowie. Microsoft reached him through an agency in the mid-1990s, and the finished piece shipped when Windows 95 went on sale on August 24, 1995, the night Microsoft turned a software release into a stadium event.
Eno described the commission to San Francisco Chronicle critic Joel Selvin in June 1996. The brief, he said, asked for "a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah-blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional," followed by a long list of adjectives, and then one line at the bottom saying it had to be three and a quarter seconds long.
That last constraint is the whole story of the commission. Microsoft was not buying a theme tune. It was buying a signal short enough to sit inside the boot sequence, on hardware where every kilobyte of audio had to load off a spinning disk before the desktop appeared.
Eighty-four versions, composed on a Macintosh
Eno made 84 versions before Microsoft picked one. That is the number he gave Selvin in 1996, and the Library of Congress essay on the recording, written by Eno biographer David Sheppard, puts it in the same range.
The scale of the job is what he kept talking about afterward. "It's like making a tiny little jewel," he told the Chronicle, describing a world of very small pieces of music in which he became sensitive to microseconds. When he went back to ordinary work, three-minute tracks felt like oceans of time.
The other detail people remember is the machine. Eno did not own a PC. Asked by BBC Radio 4 in 2009 whether he had written the Windows music on a Windows computer, he said he had used a Mac, and added, "I've never used a PC in my life; I don't like them."
So the sound that introduced Microsoft's operating system to a generation of home users was assembled on Apple hardware, by a composer who had no interest in the product it was selling.
Why the brief said 3.25 seconds and the file runs six
The version Microsoft shipped is roughly twice the length it asked for. Download The Microsoft Sound.wav today and it runs about six seconds, not three and a quarter.
The Library of Congress addressed the gap when it took the recording in. The final clip was twice as long as Microsoft's engineers had requested, and the company used it anyway because it carried the sense of welcome and progress they wanted for the launch.
So 3.25 seconds is the brief, not the artifact. Sheppard describes the chosen piece as a bright, bell-like timbre with a soft attack followed by a quickly decaying electronic piano figure. What plays when the machine boots is that idea with room to breathe.
The number survives because it is the strange part of the story. A composer known for hour-long ambient records was handed a specification measured to the quarter second, and by his own account the constraint is what made the job worth taking.
Why Windows dropped the startup sound, then brought it back
Windows 98 replaced Eno's piece with a crescendo by Microsoft sound designer Ken Kato. Windows XP got a shorter one, and for Windows Vista Microsoft brought in King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp, working with producer Tucker Martine and Microsoft's Steve Ball. That Vista sound carried into Windows 7. The same years gave Windows the Bliss wallpaper and a house style that treated switching on a computer as an occasion.
Then it stopped. Jensen Harris, lead user-interface designer on Windows 8, killed the startup sound during development. He told the podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz that opening a laptop with a sleeping baby on his arm, and having the machine announce itself, convinced him that a device used in bedrooms and libraries should not make noise by default.
The sound stayed off by default through Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.
Windows 11 reversed that in 2021 and turned the startup sound back on, playing when the PC reaches the lock screen. The new chime is called Petals, written by Microsoft composer Phi Bui with Josh Cain and Savoy Schuler, and the team has described it as a small idea blooming into something greater.
What happened to the Microsoft Sound in 2025 and 2026
In April 2025 the Library of Congress added the recording to the National Recording Registry, filed as "Windows Start-Up Chime, Brian Eno (1995)," with an essay by David Sheppard. The Library's stated reason had less to do with the music than with the machine. Windows 95 moved more of the computer under a graphical interface and made a home PC usable by people who were not specialists, and the chime is what announced it.
A month later the fee became public. In May 2025 Eno published an open letter criticizing Microsoft's supply of cloud and AI services to Israel's Ministry of Defense, and said he would give the $35,000 he was paid for the composition to Palestinian aid.
The only old Windows sound to resurface since then did so by accident, and it was not Eno's. A bug spotted in Windows 11 Insider builds in June 2025 played the Vista startup sound instead of the Windows 11 one, and Microsoft needed months to clear it, noting in the release notes for Build 27913 that it had "fixed an issue where the Windows Vista boot sound was unexpectedly being used instead of the Windows 11 boot sound."
Microsoft has not shipped The Microsoft Sound in a consumer version of Windows since 1998, and nothing announced in 2026 suggests it will. The recording's home now is a public archive and a federal registry, which is a stranger ending than a 3.25-second brief implied.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who composed the Windows 95 startup sound?
Brian Eno composed the Windows 95 startup sound, known as The Microsoft Sound, for Microsoft in the mid-1990s. He worked to an agency brief that specified 3.25 seconds, made 84 versions, and wrote them on an Apple Macintosh. The piece shipped with Windows 95 on August 24, 1995.
How much was Brian Eno paid for the Windows 95 startup sound?
Brian Eno was paid $35,000 for the Windows 95 startup sound. He confirmed the figure in May 2025, when he published an open letter criticizing Microsoft's contracts with Israel's Ministry of Defense and said he would donate that fee to Palestinian aid.
Does Windows 11 still have a startup sound?
Yes. Windows 11 restored the startup sound in 2021 and turns it on by default, playing it when the PC reaches the lock screen. It is a new composition called Petals by Phi Bui, not Brian Eno's Windows 95 chime, and it can be switched off in the Sounds tab under Personalization and Themes.