Playing WAVE files stored on a hard disk or CD-ROMOne basic use of sound is associating a sound with a user action or with a warning or alert message. These sounds tend to be short in duration and are often played repeatedly. Windows provides two functions to play waveform sounds:
| Function | Description |
| MessageBeep | Plays the sound that corresponds to a given system-alert level. |
| sndPlaySound | Plays the sound that corresponds to the given filename or WIN.INI entry. |
These functions provide the following methods of playing waveform sounds:
Playing WAVE files stored on a hard disk or CD-ROM
Playing in-memory WAVE resources
Playing WAVE files specified by entries in the WIN.INI file
Playing WAVE files associated with system-alert levels