Did you know that the Windows 95 startup sound was composed by avant-garde electronic musician Brian Eno? I had no idea until I saw it referenced on music thing. Eno describes the process in a 1996 San Francisco Chronicle interview:
Where did you find that last video? Awesome!
They should have included a sound clip for the blue screens too.
Where did you find that last video?
I can’t remember what I did yesterday, much less where I saw that link…
I’ll try to think of Windows 95 next time I’m tripping on psilocybin and hear Brian Eno. Or maybe I shouldn’t.
Eno’s name actually appears at the end of the wave file. I was astonished and saddened when I found it there several years ago. I like most of Eno’s stuff, but still find “The Microsoft Noise” entirely annoying.
I’m not aware of any famous musical pedigrees for subsequent Windows start up sounds
Well, depending on your definition of “famous” and “pedigrees” (and maybe of “musical”), all the sounds that are in the Utopia theme came from the Bob group. If I remember right …
The real question is why “they” think they are making a better interface by getting rid of the mechanical volume knob so you can turn down the volume before you turn on the computer!
Interesting-- Robert Fripp of King Crimson is doing the startup sound for Vista:
http://pluralsight.com/blogs/dbox/archive/2006/01/05/17835.aspx
woo thanks been trying to find the windows 95 startup for a digital media project at uni, lol 
robert frip and mark mothersbog(DEVO)
I used to set the startup sound on my Win98 machine to the old THX sound. It was awesome.
(Then again, I also wrote a program to play the Meow-Mix commercial every couple minutes, and thought that was awesome, so my opinions on taste may not be the most reliable.)