- Windows 11 test builds are playing the Windows Vista startup sound
- A Microsoft exec has confirmed that this is a bug in those previews
- That seems a startling coincidence, given that Microsoft has recently been poking fun at Apple’s Liquid Glass for looking like Windows Vista
In one of the strangest developments with Windows 11 in some time, test builds of the operating system have been temporarily hit by a bug that has changed the startup sound.
That’s the soundbite played when the desktop first appears, and instead of the usual Windows 11 ditty, testers in the Beta and Dev channels were booting their PCs to hear the noise from Windows Vista (and Windows 7) instead.
Those four nostalgic notes will immediately transport anyone who owned a PC with those operating systems right back to that era in computing history, and no doubt immediately confused a whole bunch of testers.
There appears to be a bug where the Windows Vista/7 startup sound is used in the latest Windows 11 Beta and Dev channelsJune 13, 2025
Why did this happen? Xeno, the Windows tester who flagged this as a bug on X (see the above post spotted by Tom’s Hardware), received confirmation from Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc, a senior product manager for Windows at the company, that it is indeed a glitch.
But not before LeBlanc joked: “I went in and had some fun with the sound files in Windows and thought folks needed a blast from the past 😉 You did say how much you loved Vista.”
When somebody responded to say that they couldn’t tell whether LeBlanc was joking or not anymore, the Microsoft exec clarified that it is indeed an actual bug that’s causing the Windows Vista startup sound to play.
Analysis: Clippy conundrum
How can a bug like that possibly creep in? It can’t, surely, although I guess what LeBlanc means is that someone was messing around with the startup sound for fun, and accidentally implemented the change for Windows 11 testers, when they didn’t mean to.
Presumably, anyway, although maybe it is the case that ancient features from long-dead Windows operating systems can indeed just randomly manifest in Windows 11. In which case, testers, look out for Clippy popping up accidentally later this year. Or the icons on the desktop suddenly reverting back to how they looked in Windows 3.1, perhaps. Who knows where the giddy merry-go-round of nostalgic glitching might lead us next?
Ahem. Or the whole thing is tongue-and-cheek, despite LeBlanc playing it straight-faced on X, and the fact that the bug has been added as a known issue for the Dev channel preview build, with Microsoft saying that it’s “working on a fix.”
Of course, it all seems too big a coincidence that Microsoft has just been poking fun at the big fanfare and fuss with which Apple presented its Liquid Glass interface for macOS Tahoe 26 (and other major platforms), when it’s reminiscent of Windows Vista’s Aero effect.
So, the Vista startup sound accidentally making its appearance here to reinforce that particular bit of shade-throwing is, shall we say, an interesting coincidence. I mean bug. Yeah – definitely an interesting bug.
