If you're anything like me, then being blasted out of your chair by a sudden wave of music when you visit certain websites, is not one of your favourite web experiences.

Short from keeping your volume turned off permanently, there is fortunately a way to block websites from playing music when you visit it.

Of course, on official movie/band websites — which is usually the ones who play music in the background on their sites — there's normally a button somewhere on the screen that says something to the like of "Music on/off" that you can click to stop the music.

However, this is a reactive solution which will not help to block that initial blast of sound. So to block all music and sounds to stop playing on any and all websites that you visit, follow these instructions:

1. In Internet Explorer 7, go to "Tools" and click on "Internet Options".
2. Now click on the "Advanced" tab.
3. Under the "Settings" heading, scroll down to the "Multimedia" subheading and deselect the box next to "Play sounds in webpages".
4. Click "OK".