is there a way to make a stephen-hawking style voice synthenisation (Like a text to speech program) in xp and save it as an audio file? also, can i set-up xp to play this sound at start-up?
well i know on windows 98 i did that not with that exact thing, but i changed the startup sound, i had to go into the windows folder find the startup sound, the wave file i believe it was, i made my own, renamed it what the startup was, and saved it in that location replacing the old and it worked
Yes. Windows has a sound recorder. So long as you have a microphone you can record something. There are various programs (some free?) that you can use to alter the sound (pitch, bass, echo, etc.).
also, can i set-up xp to play this sound at start-up?
Also yes. Your default Windows sound files are located in the C:/Windows/Media folder. If you open up Control Panel --> Sounds, then click on the Sound tab, you can change what plays when. There is no need to delete or rename sound files.