I am usually pretty good at this stuff but this one has me stumped. My son’s headset microphone does not work on his Win 7 PC.
I have tried everything that I can think of:
Tried it plugged in directly into the front audio ports on the case (the motherboard ports). Sound is fine, no mic.
Bought and installed a Sound Blaster Audigy card. Plugged the headset into those rear ports. Sound is fine, no mic.
Tested his headset on another PC. Sound and mic both work.
Took a known working headset from my PC and plugged it into his. Sound is fine, no mic.
I have tried changing the sound volume on the recording devices to no effect. I have switched the default device from microphone to line in (Audigy) to no effect. I switched the default recording device to every other option to no effect. I uninstalled Mumble to no effect.
This makes no sense to me. I have switched every available audio component and by installing the Audigy the motherboard should be out of the way. I have looked at every available option in Windows 7 and it makes no difference. Is this a lost cause at this point?
Since you have switched out the hardware, it really sounds like a software problem. I am not sure trying a 3rd microphone would help, but it certainly can’t hurt if you have one around. My first thought was that some software setting had the mic muted, but you’ve already covered that. At this point, if you are absolutely out of ideas, I would try one or two things depending on how computer savvy you are and how much time you want to spend figuring out the problem. The first option is to boot your son’s computer into a Linux live CD or USB drive and see if it can use the microphone. The second option is backup whatever is necessary and reinstall Windows which is a messy option to say the least.
I actually think there’s some software setting that does have his mic muted, but for the love of God I can not find it. It’s the only thing that makes sense since I have used two different working headsets in two different hardware ports on his computer to no avail.
I agree that does make the most sense. I’m not saying this is your problem, but I have had rare occurrences of some voice chat software (e.g., Skype, Teamspeak, Ventrillo, Mumble, etc.) taking control of my sound settings without notice and keep resetting them no matter what I tell Windows to do through the Control Panel. If you haven’t already, taking a look at (and maybe even temporarily uninstalling) any of these type of programs might be helpful in narrowing down suspects.
I ran into a similar problem after installing Sound Blaster Z card. The mic does not work plugging into the port on the card and the Sound Blaster Control Panel is very sluggish. The solution for me was disabling AMD High Definition Audio Device in Device Manager > Sound, video and game controllers. Afterward, everything worked fine.
