Mic quit working; suspect driver but how to reinstall?

OsakaWebbie

I have an Aspire M3-581T (Japanese model of ultrabook), which has a single jack for external speakers and mic. I had never used an external mic with it, but had done okay using Skype occasionally with the internal mic. Then the mic started flaking out - the first time, it quit when I unplugged my speakers and then got well when I plugged them back in. But not longer after that, it quit completely, and no amount of plugging/unplugging, rebooting, etc. will fix it. Nothing is turned off or down or anything - I compared settings with a working PC and they look similar. I thought it had just gotten confused into thinking that an external mic had been connected, so I wondered if buying and plugging in an actual headset mic would help it get well, but it didn't; in fact, the external mic doesn't work, either.

Now I'm in the States for a few months, and I'll be here until after my warranty runs out, so I need to figure this out on my own. (The U.S. Acer chat support page does not recognize my serial number.)  A tech at Fry's suggested upgrading my soundcard driver in order to refresh it (like reinstalling), but the automatic upgrade detector in Device Manager says that my driver is already current, so it won't do anything. The soundcard is apparently called "Realtek High Definition Audio", but the Realtek website shows no hint of soundcard drivers that I could find, so I don't know how I could reinstall manually. Any suggestions are appreciated.

finlux

Hi OsakaWebbie

 

If you wish to refresh or reinstall a particular driver, then go back to Device Manager and expand the item (by clicking on the + symbol). Now select the device, right click & choose "Uninstall". Once done, restart your laptop. Windows will then reinstall the driver as new.

 

If this fails to work, then backup all your data, and perform a complete reinstall of Windows.

 

If after that it still isn't working, then I'd guess that the component itself is at fault.

finlux

Hi OsakaWebbie

 

If you wish to refresh or reinstall a particular driver, then go back to Device Manager and expand the item (by clicking on the + symbol). Now select the device, right click & choose "Uninstall". Once done, restart your laptop. Windows will then reinstall the driver as new.

 

If this fails to work, then backup all your data, and perform a complete reinstall of Windows.

 

If after that it still isn't working, then I'd guess that the component itself is at fault.

OsakaWebbie

Thanks - that worked.  After that, at first the external headphones and mic failed to work (go figure! the headphones part had previously worked), but when I started connecting and disconnecting other things to test, everything started working.  The jack may be a bit flaky, but I'll just put up with that.

For those who might find this thread later, a piece of information: Before the reinstall, right-clicking on the speaker icon in the status tray and selecting Recording Device had shown two choices - "Mic" and "High Definition Audio" - but neither would work when set as the default.  After the reinstall, only "Mic" appears.  I don't know the deep meaning of that, but if you see two devices, consider doing the reinstall as I did.