43. Make Your PC Speak A Spoken Greeting When You Log On To Your Computer

How many times have you been watching a movie on Television or at the Cinema and watched as one of the characters booted his/her computer only to be greeted by the computer saying 'Welcome, John' or some other greeting.

On first thinking about this type of scenario one would immediately think that, in order to achieve this goal, one would need specialist software. Well you would be wrong. Actually to achieve your aim is far easier than you actually think. All you basically need is a script and windows notebook.

You want to know more? Then follow the instructions below:

Your greeting narrator will be Microsoft's default voice - better known as Microsoft Anna.
Open Windows Notepad by Clicking on the Start button followed by All Programs>Accessories>Notepad.
Once Notepad has opened type the following text on separate lines:
On the first line type: Dim speaks, speech
On the second line type: speaks="Welcome, John"
On the third line type: Set speech=CreateObject("sapi.spvoice")
On the fourth line type: speech.Speak speaks

Fig: 43-1 Voice Script in Notebook
Ensure that your punctuation is correct otherwise the greeting may sound strange.
Click File on the notepad toolbar and, from the drop down menu, Select Save.

Fig: 43-2 Select the Save option
Next Save the file as a VBS file. For example, welcome.vbs

Fig: 43-3 Save the welcome.vbs document
Once you have Saved the file then move it to the Windows Startup folder.
To locate the Startup folder in Windows 7 you need to ensure that the show hidden files and folders option is enabled, see How Hidden Files and Folders
Once you have enabled the show hidden files and folders option you need to navigate to the following folder: C:/Users/your_user_name/AppData/Roaming/Microsoft/ Windows/StartMenu/Programs/Startup

Fig 43.4

Fig: 43-4 Navigate to the Start Up folder

The above option only applies to You. If you have more than one user on your PC they will not received the greeting.
If you want All Users to received the greeting then place the welcome.vbs file in the following folder: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\StartMenu\Programs\Startup
When you next log on to your PC Microsoft Anna will greet you with your welcome text