1. Allow Apps To Use Your Microphone
This issue often occurs when the microphone is disabled for the apps that require access. However, when this option is disabled, you cannot use your microphone or even see the green lines in the sound control panel that indicates that your microphone is working. Therefore, to fix this, you need to allow the apps to access the microphone from the privacy settings. You can follow the steps below to do that:
2. Troubleshoot Your Microphone
If there is a problem with your microphone settings, like if your microphone is disabled from the sound control panel or some other misconfigured settings applied to your microphone, then running the microphone troubleshooter will help fix your microphone not working issue. Below are the steps you can follow to fix your microphone:
3. Make Sure Your Microphone Is Enabled And Set As A Default
You could also encounter this issue if your microphone is disabled from the sound settings. In this case, you need to enable it. However, if you have a laptop and are using another external microphone for some reason, then your microphone might not be working due to connected multiple input devices. In this case, you can set a device that you want to use as a default communication which will be used whenever you speak into your microphone. To do so:
4. Disable Exclusive Mode
Another case that can lead you to this issue is having exclusive mode enabled on the microphone. Exclusive mode allows the apps to take exclusive control of the microphone, which means all other applications cannot use your microphone if one application is currently using it. If you choose to disable this option, then all of the application that requires microphone access can use your microphone device at the same time, which might fix this issue.
5. Update or Use a Generic Microphone Driver
There is a possibility that your current driver for the microphone device is corrupted, which happens very rarely. Windows always have a generic driver for the input devices. In my case, I can use a generic driver instead of my microphone driver. So if my microphone driver gets corrupted in the future, I can use a generic driver. Updating the driver will do the same because if your driver is not working properly due to some reasons, then updating the driver will work as a reinstalling. Therefore, try both solutions as one of them might work for you.
6. Try Re-Connecting Your Bluetooth Headset
If you have a Bluetooth headset connected to your computer but are not able to receive audio from the microphone, then you can try re-connecting your Bluetooth headset in order to fix connecting issues. Here are the steps:
7. Reinstall Your Microphone Driver
If the above method fails to fix your issue, we recommend reinstalling your microphone driver using the DDU application. But before that, ensure you do not have multiple drivers for a microphone because this might confuse Windows in choosing which driver should use for the microphone. You can see the audio drivers from the device manager. If that’s the case, you can use DDU to uninstall all the microphone drivers, but if you do not have multiple drivers, still reinstall your microphone driver with the DDU application. DDU or Display Driver Uninstaller is an application that allows its users to uninstall audio and GPU drivers along with the registry files. Follow the steps written below to reinstall audio drivers:
8. Uninstall Microphone Booster Applications
If the issue persists after trying all the above solutions, it could be due to using third-party applications to enhance the microphone. If you have installed this type of application that is used to enhance the microphone, then uninstalling it could be a better option. However, if you do not want it to uninstall, then make sure that the application is not preventing the microphone from working.
9. Make Sure The Headphone Is Compatible
There is a possibility that your headset is not compatible with your computer or laptop. If we take an example, there are two possible scenarios that can lead you to incompatible hardware issues. If you have a computer or laptop with one 3.5mm headset port which is very rare, and you have a headset with 2 jacks. The other case is if you have 2 female jacks but your headset has only one male jack. In both cases, you might need to buy either a headphone splitter jack cable or a new compatible headset.
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