Hello all,
I knwo this is not GOG specific, however, I thought this would be the community that would know.

How can I get sounds out of a game, to store as a wav or mp3 so I can use them as windows sounds? For instance the Mechwarrior 2 mech startup "Reactor online, systems online, weapons online all systems nominal" or "Fleet Command online" from Homeworld and there are many others.

Anyone know how to go about doing something like that? Heck, even a place to DL tons of old game files already ripped wouldn't be bad either?

1. I believe you can rip them yourself using tools such as Fraps (video + audio) or Audacity (audio only), selecting the appropriate audio input (Edit>Preferences>Audio I/O).

2. Rip them from Youtube gameplay videos

3. Google something like 'Mechwarrior sound files', you may get a hit or two.

For MechWarrior 2 see this page. You can probably find what you want there. I'm not familiar enough with Homeworld to know what site would have sounds that are accurate to the game but there's probably something out there for that too.

For many games there is some way to extract the audio files yourself, which will get better results than capturing the audio channel manually; this is especially likely if the game used a licensed engine or audio format rather than making their own.

For Homeworld, check forums.relicnews.com. Homeworld games have their own section and either try to search for some modding topics or ask the people there.
In general, try to google some datamining programs or editors, for example MM7edit can extract sounds or graphic sprite from the gane files in Might and Magic 7. They tend to be game-specific, though.