Windows 11 Insiders who have the Startup sound enabled were met with an unexpected surprise - instead of the sleek, modern chime familiar to most, they were greeted by the good old startup sound of Windows Vista. What appeared to be a nostalgic callback was, in fact, an unintended audio mix-up introduced in recent builds from the Dev and Beta channels.
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Microsoft quickly acknowledged the issue, confirming that it was an accidental change rather than a deliberate design decision. "[ADDED] This week’s flight comes with a delightful blast from the past and will play the Windows Vista boot sound instead of the Windows 11 boot sound. We’re working on a fix." reads the official note in the known issues list for Windows 11.
The bug reportedly stemmed from a misconfiguration during the rollout of new system sounds tied to updated power-on and boot experiences. While unintentional, the change caused a flow of reactions across tech forums and social media, with many users expressing amusement or even appreciation for the retro touch.
Some longtime Windows users welcomed the return of the Vista-era tone, calling it a reminder of simpler computing days. Others joked about the incident being a "step back in time" or a hidden Easter egg gone rogue. "The Community" even made a guess that this was done intentionally because many people remember Windows Vista in the wake of the announcement of the "Liquid Glass" design in Apple macOS 26 Tahoe.
Despite the brief nostalgia trip, Microsoft assures that this is not a permanent change. A fix is already in development and expected to roll out soon, restoring Windows 11's signature startup sound as part of the regular update cycle.
Vista may not have had the best reputation during its time, but today, it seems, it earned a small moment of glory.
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Vista is still the most beautiful version of Windows to date.
Well, it had a very special look and nice effects.
I was the sucker of Vista because of Aero and security features, I gonna say a step up from who are tired of XP’s default theme and not to being secure (bec. of XP’s having full admin grant), even UAC was getting too annoying until got tamed on Service Pack releases and even Windows 7.