How to mute startup chime in sacrilegious iMac?

[FTRDRMZ]

Hello, I have an older (Early 2006) iMac 17". Aside from that computer, my entire home network is Windows 7 based. Having grown tired with attempts to get the Mac to reliably play nice with the rest of the network, I installed Windows 7 on it. I had intended to use BootCamp to partiton the drive, but it failed because it couldn't move some files, so I just wiped the drive and made it all Windows.

However, I forgot to mute or reduce the volume of the startup chime, and the computer does get turned on at odd hours. Changing the volume in Windows doesn't affect the chime, and holding mute on my (Microsoft USB Wireless) keyboard doesn't mute it either. I had tried booting the installer disk to mute it from in there, but it seems that the installer doesn't loader audio drivers or volume controls.

I don't want to install Macintosh simply to change the volume of the chime, so is there a way to do it directly in the firmware? thanks.






Please don't hate me

 

[benhollberg]

Maybe just get a Windows computer.

 

[FTRDRMZ]

Already have them thanks, and the hardware runs perfectly fine with Windows.




Probably better than with Mac, because it's 32bit and so can't run Lion or Mountain Lion, or any applications that dropped support for Snow leopard.

 

[teleromeo]

Try to plug in a headphone. On olders models this should work, not sure about yours.

 

[FTRDRMZ]

...

No.


Anyways, I found the solution (and am updating this thread for future poor souls who have this problem)
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBook#Mute_startup_chime
This link has some useful hints for people who don't have Macintosh on their Macs.

Mute startup chime
If you forgot to mute before installing, you can still mute again if you have a Mac OS X Install disk. Boot from it, select language, then click Utilities->Terminal, and enter

# /usr/sbin/nvram SystemAudioVolume=%01

(or whatever volume you want).

...and I just found the subforum this thread is supposed to be in. Sorry.