http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=28597
--- Comment #5 from Jörg Höhle hoehle@users.sourceforge.net 2011-10-27 02:53:51 CDT --- I don't understand why the future IMMNotificationClient would help. Your suspicion in comment #1 seems very reasonable, the user expects to have "test sound" take effect immediately (this was a long-standing bug), so the goal is to have winmm shut down properly and be able to reload it.
What does prevent winmm from shutting down its devices thread properly? your patch sounds like a work-around the bug that winmm may not unload properly, which sounds like it could potentially affect any app that dynamically loads it (probably a minority).