Windows Start sound plays during HL demo

[AsteralTraveler]

While I was playing the Half-Life demo I DSL downloaded, I kept hearing the Windows Start sound repeatedly playing in the background (I'm not using the default sound file). This would occur during the first part of the game where they're in the helicopter, before the crash. This is the only place I have this particular wave file set in Win2K's Control Panel Sounds and Multimedia properties dialog.

I didn't think much of it until I tried to escape out of game-play, and then minimze the screen so I could get back to my desktop to see if anything was amiss. Everthing looked okay (OE and my homepage - TechIMO still showed up) but when I tried to maximize the game again, it seemed like it was coming back up, but would immediately vanish. The game's task button still showed in the taskbar, and I finally had to right click on it and close it. Should I just blow it off as a buggy game demo?

My system specs, in case it matters, include a Gigabyte MB w/865PE chipset, P4 2.4c processor, Viper V770 32 meg AGP 4x graphics card (don't laugh, it's temporary), DirectX 9, and 512 meg of Corsair XMS RAM.

TIA for any help.

AT

[AsteralTraveler]

Okay, I lied. I also have this particular sound set to play whenever a "critical stop" occurs. I guess my idea of what that is probably isn't correct, so now the question becomes: What can cause so many critical stops to occur during the beginning of the Half Life demo?

Any thoughts?