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Microphone/Audio Problems
I recently purchased an Inspirion 14 5447 laptop. Everything was working great until I tried to video chat with friends. The microphone would not work. I could hear the other participants and play music so the speakers were working fine. I could not record a sound in the sound recorder. The more I investigated the more fristrated I got. I called a technical support representative and together we tried for hours to resolve the issue. Nothing seemed to work including reinstalling the audio drivers and even refreshing the computer. The only option I was given at that point was to ship the computer to a depot for a warranty service.
The next day I opend my laptop and heard a ringing/echo coming from the speakers (like when a microphone has interfearance at a concert). When I opened the Dell Audio window (not sound) the microphone was turned "off". As soon as I hit mute the noise stopped. If I unmuted and turned the microphone to "on", the microphone would stop working all together. Basically my microphone works, so long as it is actually turned "off". Something in the audio driver seems to be messed up.I seem to have found a way to make things work, but I was wondering if there was an explanation or permanent repair for this problem.
DELL-Terry B
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February 16th, 2015 13:00
If you first noticed the problem when trying to video chat, settings in your video chat utility could be attempting to control the microphone. If you are using SKYPE the following document may be of help.
Here is a "FIX IT" page from Microsoft that may help as well.
You can also manually change it in Windows.
Right click on the speaker icon on the toolbar and choose recording devices. Choose the microphone from the list and choose properties.
Click the Advanced tab.
Under Exclusive Mode make sure that " Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device" is not checked.
I hope that this helped
TB
gigi511
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April 15th, 2015 22:00
I am having the exact same problem: when my microphone is "off" I hear some sort of background noise, but when the microphone is turned on, I hear absolute silence in playback. This is a big surprise to me because I used the computer only a few weeks ago, recording my voice ,and had no problems. I can't even imagine what could be wrong with this (this is a refurbished computer I received from Dell after receiving a defected one). If the internal microphone isn't working, will I still be able to use an external one?