2007-06-24

Vista Enable Microphone Recording

I wanted to make a recording but there were no recording devices available in Vista's Sound control panel applet. Then I found out that I had to select Show Disabled Devices menu item in the Recording tab sheet's context menu to see the microphone before I could enable it. Grrr! Prior to this problem, I'd never seen a context menu in a tab sheet. Also, it seems silly to have the option to hide audio devices; most users would only have a small number of playback and recording devices in the first place.

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50 comments:

  1. Anonymous6 August 2007 at 00:45

    Thanks for this article. It's been bugging me for weeks why I couldn't see the ****ing microphone. I finally decided to look into it and yours was the first article I came across. However it still took me a couple of minutes to understand what you meant in your instructions, so here is a little more detail for anyone following in my wake :-)

    Thanks again.

    Right click on speaker icon in the System Tray area.
    Select Recording Devices.
    Right click anywhere in the main window that appears.
    Select Show Disabled Devices.
    Enable Microphone.

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  2. Anonymous6 August 2007 at 09:50

    Thanks for the extra notes. I'm glad that I'm not the only person in the world who seems to find problems with Vista!

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  3. Anonymous12 January 2008 at 12:55

    OMG thank you so so much for this information. i had no idea how to find this.

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  4. Anonymous28 January 2008 at 19:41

    Thanks guys, all these days i was annoyed not to find my mic enabled and not to find any option where I can enable it directly. Vista sucks...

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  5. Anonymous30 January 2008 at 14:38

    Thanks for posting this tip. Frankly I purposely “disabled” my mic because it was interfering with some line input recording I was doing, then I couldn’t figure out how to recover? Then to top it off I decided to simply delte the line in device too for good measure. After 5 m inutes of looking in the obvious places (vista help, Microsoft.com) I found this article as my first hit and it solved my problem. What a fiasco this vista is. I bouht it the day it came out and I’m still struggling with it! My monitor, keyboard and mouse thank you (saved them from further punishment)

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  6. Anonymous17 March 2008 at 23:05

    Me too, thanks

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  7. Anonymous15 April 2008 at 14:34

    I had the same problem. Thanks for the tip. Really appreciate it.

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  8. Anonymous14 May 2008 at 17:40

    Yes, thank so much!! I literally searched for hours and was getting nowhere! Thanks for helping me get my mic back!

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  9. Anonymous14 June 2008 at 15:51

    Wow, this is a great help. Thanks.

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  10. Anonymous23 June 2008 at 06:26

    Hey! Thanks! I was about to reinstall all the drivers from the CD....this save me A LOT of work. Thanks again!

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  11. Anonymous9 July 2008 at 01:27

    thanks

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  12. Anonymous13 August 2008 at 04:27

    Thanks for that! I thought I had broken it there for a while!

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  13. Anonymous15 August 2008 at 06:28

    Thanks for this info!

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  14. Anonymous19 August 2008 at 22:59

    I've been trying to get my microphone working on my Inspiron E1505. Finally found this posting;still can't get it to work. My recording tab shows a SigmaTel High Definition Audio CODEC "Working". The icon is a desk microphone and I'm trying to use a Labtec headset. Do I need to install a different driver?

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  15. Anonymous20 August 2008 at 23:49

    INCREDIBLE!!!!!!!!!!

    THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SHARING THIS ! !

    Some Vista people ought to really be reading this - i think millions out there, like us, are lost and thought they'd lost their mic / line-in etc forever.

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  16. Anonymous24 August 2008 at 06:19

    Thank you. Me too on this problem. Microsoft is no help to new Vista users.

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  17. Anonymous20 October 2008 at 13:22

    Phew! Thanks for sharing that, I thought I'd lost the mic! Has anyone else had problems with not being able to turn off mic enhancements on vista?

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  18. Anonymous22 November 2008 at 14:57

    thanks

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  19. Anonymous11 December 2008 at 10:34

    Thank you very much, your info help me a lot!

    best regards,

    Nilton Fernandes

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  20. Anonymous27 January 2009 at 02:23

    Like what everyone said - you are a legend.

    Thanks

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  21. Anonymous13 February 2009 at 04:21

    Thanks - just the ticket!

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  22. Anonymous27 February 2009 at 09:57

    I remember there used to be a way to create a "hardware profile," probably still is. That's what I was looking for. I was about to roll back my system when I thought I'd Google it.

    What came up? This! Thanks, maximum respect ^5s

    Greg In Idaho

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  23. Anonymous8 March 2009 at 01:57

    Thank you so much.. this solved my problem...

    I think that's it.. I am done with vista.. I will shift to xp

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  24. Santro9 March 2009 at 05:43

    hey HI ,
    I have a inspiron 1420 . I have reinstalled my vista operating system..But after i reinstalled my microphone is not working..I cant do voice chat and also i cant record sound with sound recorder..Could you please help me on this?

    Thanks in advance

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  25. Anonymous14 March 2009 at 23:34

    this really heped me too and im pretty experienced around this audio. thank u thank u and check out my music some time , soundclick.com/mrsilence
    thanks, SILENCE

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  26. Anonymous26 March 2009 at 03:07

    thankkkkkkkkkkk god for that......what a jok this op system is........thnks tho....i been tryin to figure it out for hours...

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  27. Martin Korner2 April 2009 at 23:57

    Thanks a lot, I thought I'd lost my microphone when I disabled it and it just disappeared from the Recording tab.

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  28. Anonymous3 April 2009 at 06:47

    Thaaaannnkkss!
    I was so angry that after disabling device it's just GONE! Right click -> "show disabled devices"... Come ON!

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  29. Anonymous7 April 2009 at 20:17

    Thanks for the kind information but its not working in the vista sp1, so anyone there to give me the rite now.

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  30. Unknown1 May 2009 at 19:13

    even with the disabled devices selected, the MIC does not show up: any ideas?

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  31. Anonymous3 May 2009 at 22:46

    thx so much to ed wenn
    i didnt get the by kam too...
    got my prob fixed after so many browsings ..
    thanks again

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  32. Anonymous10 May 2009 at 18:01

    Hey, thanks alot. it saved a lot of time for me.
    but still my microphone is not working. is there any body to help me out.

    thanks alot.

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  33. Anonymous11 May 2009 at 06:06

    Awesome. Perfect fix!

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  34. Anonymous13 May 2009 at 20:45

    Thank You Ed Wenn! Thanks everybody. Isnt it ridiculous that you must go through this mysterious proceedure. i must say I'm happy with Vista in general but things like this are silly. Cheers Guys. Had same prob with speakers too. sorted now!!

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  35. Anonymous17 May 2009 at 17:39

    i just reinstalled vista and even with it ticked it still wont show microphone its really fustrating can someone help please

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  36. Anonymous15 June 2009 at 03:12

    THANKYOU SOOO MUCH! MOM WOULD OF WENT CRAZY IF SHE FOUND OUT!

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  37. Anonymous13 July 2009 at 15:07

    Wow, thank you! If I couldn't recover from this, I would've peed myself... seriously. Thanks.

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  38. KriSaku19 August 2009 at 11:36

    hahaha that was easy, i sopnd days trying to figure out this.. and you can enable them in less than 3 seconds...

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  39. Anonymous30 September 2009 at 21:24

    THank you so very much; brillient support info
    love you

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  40. Anonymous11 October 2009 at 01:09

    Thanks for the tip guys. Microsoft are getting dumb and dumber.

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  41. Anonymous11 October 2009 at 06:08

    THANK YOU! IT HELPS ME A LOT!

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  42. Anonymous6 November 2009 at 05:33

    Dudes, thank you for this! I've been fucking around with this for ages. Why the fuck did they hide that menu? You go there, you see it, you can disable it. When you go back to enable it you would exepct to see it in a disabled state. But no you don't see it there. Well this is plain stupid.

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  43. Anonymous19 November 2009 at 14:59

    Gawds my life is saved!
    A thousand "Thank you's" to you

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  44. Anonymous25 March 2010 at 07:51

    even in 2010 this is a lifesaver

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  45. Anonymous17 June 2010 at 14:58

    thank you thank you thank you

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  46. Anonymous29 August 2010 at 04:11

    real thank you for you my friend
    prasenna
    dubai

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  47. Abigails Party16 September 2010 at 06:11

    Cheers Skype can now have audio as well as video. Thank goodness

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  48. Destinct Voice4 October 2010 at 20:16

    Thanks for the info about Vista, but you should probably look into buying an Alesis IO/2 audio interface.

    cheers

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  49. Anonymous6 November 2010 at 07:43

    thank you very much!!! i thougt i'd never get it enabled anymore. i searched everywhere but got no solution. they only told me that it's something about the driver but i knew that was wrong and now i read this! so thank you thank you thank you ...

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  50. Anonymous13 September 2012 at 17:52

    Cheers Mate, I feel like such a dope for not right clicking....

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