Startup Sound

Is it possible to either change the startup sound (the one after pressing the power button) or to decrease the volume.

Cheers
Dave

Yes, turn down the volume on your Mac; as far as I am aware there is no specific setting that I know of that applies solely to the startup chime.

I also don't thnk the chime can be changed; as it is there to signify when the machine has POSTed.

Vicky

The startup sound cannot be changed, as it sits in the Mac's firmware.
You can change it's volume, like Vicky described, and even turn it off completely by muting your sound before shutting down.

On some Macs though (like the MDD PowerMacs) this doesn't work, Whatever you set the volume, the startup sound always stays at full volume, which can be pretty annyoing when you have a nice 2.1 speaker setup connected.

In that case, you'll need this little tool:
http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~arcana/index.en.html

It's a Preference pane which allows to set the startup sound volume independently from the main volume.

Thank you both very much

The StartupSound.prefPane page has a notice saying it won't work with Intel Macs. So if you can't or don't want to use it, you can make two simple AppleScripts to kill the startup chime, one for restarting the computer, the other to shut it down:

tell application "Finder"
set volume 0
restart
end tell

tell application "Finder"
set volume 0
shut down
end tell

A third script is added to the Login Items list in the System Preferences Accounts pane. The script doesn't kick in until after the gag is removed.

tell application "Finder"
set volume 2
end tell

Set the volume number to match your speakers' volume. Write the scripts in an AppleScript blank or copy and paste them, then save each as an application and put them in the dock.

also a tip for laptop users if you dont remember if you turned off the sound have have to start up in a lecture hall or meeting and dont want to make any noise hold down the mute key when you start up.