How to Temporarily mute computer speakers over night.

Have you ever fallen asleep and left your computer only to be awaken by an email alert or messenger prompt. The following software allows you to remedy that problem.
It can also be useful in the workplace. If you have a regular meeting you go to each week, it may be worth having your computer mute the sound of your laptop while you are in the board room.

The process is fairly simple. We need to use a free third party utility to allow the mute to take place. I am going to use a program called Mute.

The next step is to set up a scheduled task to enable and disable these utilities. All of these utilities unload themselves from memory once they have run. This means that unmuting can still be controlled through your normal muting methods.

The setup for Vista and XP are slightly different, but you will find them both here.

Start off by downloading your desired mute program and save it somewhere you can get to easily.

Windows XP:

Open “Scheduled Tasks” (inside accessories of the start menu)
Double Click “Add Scheduled Task”
Click “Next”
Browse to your utility; E.g. C:\mute.exe
Select when you want it to run. (I chose Daily).
Click “Next”
Select what time you want the task to run; E.g. 12:00am
Enter in your username and password
Click “Next”
Tick the Open Advanced Properties tick box
Click “Finish”
In the Run box, make it “C:\mute.exe on”

You will need to follow the steps above to make a second task to unmute your computer in the morning. You will need to change the name of it to unmute so that it does not conflict with the initial task.
This will need to have the off argument instead of on.

That’s it. Your computer should now mute and unmute itself at the times you specified.

Windows Vista:

The Vista setup is similar to the XP setup, but you get a few more options. You can set it to only occur if the computer has been idle for longer than 10 minutes. This means that your computer game or movie won’t be interrupted.

Open “Task Scheduler” (inside accessories of the start menu)
Click “Create New Task” (not basic)
Give it a name “Mute”
Go to the “Triggers” tab
Click “New” (defaults to schedule)
Enter the frequency and time you want the mute to occur
Click “OK”
Go to the “Actions” tab
Click “New” (defaults to run program)
Browse for your program and put in the necessary arguments; E.g. On
Click “OK”
Go to the “Conditions” tab
Here, define how long you want the computer to be idle before activating the mute.
Click “OK”

You will need to follow the steps above to make a second task to unmute your computer in the morning. You will need to change the name of it to unmute so that it does not conflict with the initial task. This will need to have the off argument instead of on.

That’s it. Your computer should now mute and unmute itself at the times you specified.