I just want to chime in and say that this is a pet peeve of mine about laptops.

Even for laptops which have specific volume buttons on their keyboards, you often have to wait for Windows to boot up and load the tricky-dicky driver that links those keys to the sound drivers.

This means if you've got an annoying windows startup sound, and you boot your laptop in a place where you want to be quiet, you can't shut it the fuck up while Windows boots.

Why do they design laptops so poorly? Why aren't the volume buttons pure hardware that work no matter what OS and drivers you've got installed?

When I bought the Toshiba laptop that my GF and I share, I was thrilled to find it had a genuine analog hardwired volume potentiometer. If you need this thing to be quiet RIGHT NOW, there's nothing more effective than a knob. Long live old skool.

Thanks for letting me rant. Carry on.