How does Windows work again?

Another puzzler. Fry’s lent me a very nice Toshiba while they hold LittleSteven hostage. Comes with XP SP2 (Home, not Pro, but for a short period not too significant), Office 2003 (S&T, not Pro but again n/t/s), and Norton Anti-Virus preinstalled so only needed to grab a few small patches on startup, not the usual headache. Plus my backup system (Eazy Backup and a Ximeta NAS) worked like a charm so no data loss.

But! And this is one of those small but really annoying things, how do I shut off the “You’ve got mail” sound that plays every time Outlook has incoming? I unclicked the option in Outlook itself. I went into the Windows Control Panel Sounds applet and switched to the No Sounds setting, which is supposed to turn off all preset event-based sounds.

Yet I still hear this with every new message, even when Outlook recognizes it as spam. Uggh!

Two minutes later: Okay, I found the culprit. Toshiba includes an idiotic utility to do this, hidden in Outlook’s Add-ins. I had to go to Tools | Options | Other | Advanced Options | Add-in Manager, that’s five levels down, just to see Mail Speak (TOSHIBA). I mean really guys, WTF?