What is the Asterisk program event in Windows?

Question

What is the Asterisk program event in Windows?

Answer 1

It's the sound/event that is associated with the Windows Information alert type (vs. a Critical, an Exclamation, or a Question).

We can demonstrate this by creating a quick VBS script to create a new message box (see the MsgBox function) and set its MsgBoxStyle to include the Information flag - vbInformation = 64.

So create a text file named info.vbs or alike, and put this in it:

x = MsgBox("Here's some info", vbOKOnly Or vbInformation, "Information Dialogue")

Save it, and run it with wscript info.vbs or cscript info.vbs.

It will pop up a box with an OK button and the "information" icon, and also play the accompanying sound event ("Asterisk").

To compare, if you change the flag to something else, like vbCritical (= 16), which will display the matching "critical" icon, and play the "Critical Stop" sound.

Answer 2

To complement Techie007's answer, an information message box is also called an asterisk because that's what its stock icon was in Windows 1 and 2!

For the same reason, an error box used to be called a hand.

Source: Raymond Chen