How do I enable sounds for alarms and alerts, and turn them off for everything else? I need to hear my clander alarms, but can't stand to hear the "squish" of a new window opening

I gather you've never clicked on the Start icon, then Help, then Settings, then Sounds and Notifications.

Go into Settings then Personal then Sounds & Notifications. There you'll see exactly how you can change your sounds and turn on/off particular areas.

If you don't like the sounds, you can always copy new sounds onto the PDA (put them in the Windows folder) and use the Sounds & Notifications to choose the new sounds for what you want.

Of course I have - but notifications cannot be turned on separately from program sounds, and program sounds cannot be configured from the settings tab. So how do I get my alarm to sound, and not have pocket excel go "woooooohhhh" when it opens? Am I missing something obvious?

My Excel doesn't go "wooohhh" but did you check the "notifications" tab within Sounds & Notifications? On mine there is a dropdown that allows me to turn sounds off and on per app, as well as other options. Excel isn't listed in my drop down, if its in yours uncheck it, if not...

I'm betting you've got a third party program that's augmenting your sound options, in which case there would settings in it that allow you to tailor sounds with particular programs.

In the stock WM2k3, when you go into Sounds & Notifications you should see the following options:

SYSTEM VOLUME followed by a slider going from Silent to Loud

ENABLE SOUNDS FOR
__ Events (warnings, system events)

__ Programs [I'm betting this is checked on your machine]

__ Notifications (alarms, reminders)

__ Screen taps

O Soft O Loud

__ Hardware buttons

O Soft O Loud

So, by UNchecking Programs you shouldn't hear any sounds associated with applications running, but leaving Notifications checked will allow alarms to work.

Anyone know how to make it make the ding dong ish sound at soft reset? Mine makes a faint sound then starts..

  

I use wisbar advance and pcoket launcher, but even with both disabled the "notifications" checkbox is only enabled when the "programs" checkbox is selected, and the list of events on the notifications tab does not include things like "program start" or "program exit", only a few system events like "begin synch" and such like. I am beginning to think that the only way to do what I want to is by a registry hack...

Aha!!!!!! please read the following taken from the wisbar website skinning guide:

Sounds

While not a visual element, WA2 now provides the ability to change the system event sounds. This functionality exists in the PPC2000 OS, but for some reason Microsoft removed this feature. Now, with WA2, you can customize them again. Currently, this section (and the button skinning) are only available through your skin files. Here is what the skin file entry looks like:
[Sounds]
SystemAsterisk=Sounds\astersks.wav
MenuCommand=Sounds\menusels.wav
MenuPopup=Sounds\menupops.wav
Minimize=Sounds\windmins.wav
Startup=Sounds\startups.wav
SystemDefault=Sounds\defaults.wav
SystemExclamation=Sounds\exlams.wav
SystemHand=Sounds\defaults.wav
SystemQuestion=Sounds\questns.wav
Open=Sounds\openprgs.wav
Close=Sounds\closes.wav
Maximize=Sounds\windmaxs.wav

The labels above correspond to the aliases used by the shell to represent certain shell events. So, for example, the "Open" sound is used when a new window has been created and the "Close" sound is used when a window is closed. If you do not specify a sound, the default sound (if there is one) will be played instead. One thing to remember is that WA does not actually generate these events, so they may not always play when you would expect them to.

These sounds can't be just any type of sound file. They must be WAV files in the PCM format as this is what the OS supports. If you have a sound file and you're not sure what format it is in, then on your desktop launch "Sound Recorder" (provided with all versions of Windows) and load up the sound file. Using this program you can convert the file to PCM format, adjust the volume and add special effects to the sound.