Yeah, that works to kill midi sounds and the like on web pages, and I too would love to throw Flash out into the freeway and let cars run over it all day. But what about otherwise useful sounds that play during music playback? For instance, I normally don't mind hearing error beeps, but not when I'm listening to music (or watching a movie). And, yes, I've slimmed down my system sounds to what I consider to be a minimum. Stuff like low battery warnings and even the new e-mail sound are pretty useful. Most of the time.
I've hunted through every Windows annoyance and tip site I can find and read every article in the MS Knowledge Base on sound under XP (there are only like 10 so far, so they were of zero help), but can't figure out how to lock my sound card to a particular program when it is running. The big deal about Win XP is that it's supposed to provide a complete software layer between applications and hardware, right? So that should mean that it's an OS, not application, issue. But, since MJ used to do this very thing under previous versions of Windows, I'm hoping that someone here might have a clue on how to make it happen all over again.
I guess what I really want is to regain some control over my computer. Even though I've disabled almost all of the "helpful" crap that came with XP, the only easily accessible changes are mostly cosmetic. Behind the scenes it's still up to no good. And I don't even know where to start figuring out what it's really doing.
Anyway, thanks for the suggestions. Any others?