Vista - Microphone not working, able to hear all sound but not be heard.

Hello,

First let me preface this by thanking anybody that either reads my post or attempts to respond to it.

I am a gamer, and I play WoW. I use vent to talk to friends while i'm playing the game. I haven't really had any trouble with microphone or sound settings before until I got my new gateway pc from best buy with windows vista on it.

Ever since then I couldn't use my microphone on it. I have tried to improvise by checking the vista support forums for tips/tricks on fixing the general microphone settings but nothing has really helped me so far. The sound on my computer is fine. I can listen to music and hear others talking while i'm connected to ventrilo. Each time I connect to ventrilo I get this error :

Unable to activate DirectSound for selected device.
DirectSoundCaptureCreate failed, hr = 88780078

When I go to Control Panel > Sound > Recording

it shows that my microphone is unplugged. I don't understand how its unplugged when its plugged into the regular pink jack that its always been plugged into.

on the vista forums i tried to follow a suggestion of plugging my mic jack into the blue line in jack instead of the pink one I normally plug it into. I followed step by step to make sure that the microphone wasn't muted and it still isn't working.

Is there anyone that can help me fix this problem? I would really appreciate it. I hope that I was specific enough also.

Are you using onboard audio or a stand-alone audio card? (sound blaster x-fi for instance)

I have done some playing around with this myself.. I personally have no issues with talking to people on vent but on TS I am unable to boost my outbound enough as to get people to actually be able to hear me.

If you are using a stand-alone card you will want to make sure your microphone is plugged into the pink microphone jack for the audio card, not the motherboard.
(if your audio card is an X-Fi xtreme gamer like mine the micrphone jack is also the SPDIF I/O jack and is white, not pink)

Also check if your onboard audio device has been DISABLED in device manager.

Then right click on your audio icon, open recording devices.
'disable' all devices listed there except for your microphone.
'enable' your microphone (if it wasnt already) and make sure it is 'set as default device'
select your microphone and open 'properties'
IF you have this tab, open 'custom' and enable the boost
go to 'levels' and put the slider on max, also enable boost IF it is listed here
go to 'advanced' and DISABLE 'allow applications to take exclusive control'
APLLY and exit and try it now =)

You might want to try to disable 'use direct sound' in your vent settings and/or play around with those settings a bit.
I have personally found that if I use direct sound in vent after a few minutes my audio 'DIES'. for some reason all inbound/outbound seizes to work.. so unfortunatelly I have to use vent with direct sound disabled.

I hope this helps you,

Good luck!

Hey there!

thanks for the reply.

I ended up just biting the bullet and uninstalling then reinstalling my sound card drivers. Not sure what started the problem, but its fixed now!

Glad to hear it!

I tried reinstalling audio drivers aswell but that had no effect for me
so that is why I did not list that solution in my reply =/