I plugged in an external microphone to my Vista HP Notebook PC. It does not pick up sound. But when I use the notebook's built-in microphone, it works and does pick up sound. And when I plug in the external microphone to a difference machine running Windows XP, it works. So the microphone itself appears to be functioning.

I just don't know if the microphone does not work on Vista or whether my audio jack is broken.

Could it be that certain microphones will not work on Vista? Or will all microphones that work on XP would work on Vista? Or do I need to get a microphone that is specifically "made for Vista"?

Do I have to run some settings on my control panel to tell Vista to use an external microphone?

How can I tell if my audio jack is working or not? Although when I plug something into, there is a bubble popping up from system tray that Jack was plugged in.

I appear to be having the same problem -waits for someone to reply with a solution-

is it that the mic is muted, or that its on a unactive sound card

There's actually a sound device that's disabled by default (I'm not near my Vista laptop right now...it's at home...but I know that you have to go into where the sound properties are and view the disabled ones. It's like a mixer or something.) Whatever the device is, it's the one that controls the mic and any recording devices.

Volume control is defaulted to mute external microphones in the presence of internal ones. Change the setting in administrative mode or you'll have to change it on every log-on. If you recall Windows XP had no defaults so users would get an ungodly echo and complain their microphone was broken. This way no such complaints will occur but they should have left some information pertaining to this default setting. If you need help navigating to the volume controls say so.

im on vista and im finding there so much which is dummed down its starting to get a bit annouying.

it seems that, alot of it its tried to make it simple for not tech users and mader it harder for people who know what they are doing (me) to change and modify it to work!

BTw: does anyone know if/where to get themes for the Vista?

i actualyl quite like the Basic version which is black. which it it decided to randomly change to because "some part of blah wont run properly with the visiual elements.. ."

Dan :S

That's why I use a Mac (Macbook to be precise)

2.16Ghz Core 2 Duo processor
2GB RAM
Mac OS X 10.4

I haven't yet tried Vista actually but I don't think I will any time soon - there are just too many problems and things to annoy people

I require too must precision and speed in an operating system. Vista was poorly designed and doesn't meet my minimum requirements for reliability. XP barely met those guidelines. Which is why XP gets the small partition.

vista still has a lot of bugs and brings very little thatsd new to the table... i think they made a huge mistake with it.. the interface is nothing new at all, you cud mod a XP to look like vista even before the vista beta was out.... hope vienna is much better...

This is something which alot of people dont know, the reason many say this about vista is because we (as consumers) were suposed to have the impact of Vienna FIRST and then vista was the follow up, but instead they have ended up round the other way,

I was tunning XP pro, and now im on Vista ultimate, while i think there are some very nifty little things which are much better with vista the only real problems or annouences i have found is how they have dummed down the menus and options, they seem to have made it not quite so simple for people who know what they are doing.

i am really quite liking the interface (please only throw soft fruit) its nice and flashy and the best thing i have noticed is how when u hover over other programs in ur taskbar u can see the realtime of whats goign on same for the WIN key and tab view which shows the nice slide switcher thing.

Also the best thing is the Windows Mail which is a replacemtn for Outlook Express. it is the best email client i have used so far and the SPAM feature is very good and nice and simple to use.

Also the VERY best bit when comparing XP to VISTA has to be drivers! (i knwo all Mac users are proballyt going yea we dont have these problems..)
but especially with my mother board which i do not have a instalation disc for everytime i reinstall XP i had a annouying job of getting all the bits to work.

where as vista it works first time and its just great at handling them, the manager htign which shows all your updates for drivers and you can select which ones and its done

i havent really noticed any crashes, and was expecting beofore i upgraded it to be quite slow, due to the slowness of my XP but its actually quite fast and it handles not response problems with programs very well.

also the gadgets are quite cool and usful.

basically i have yet to find any faults which are enough to stop me upgrading from XP.

Dan

Talkupation Apprieciated

Originally Posted by dansgalaxy

also the gadgets are quite cool and usful.

Yet another idea stolen from Mac! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDNuq94Zg_8

Also, I was once a Windows fanatic and I switched camps after trying out a Mac and realising how simple Macs really are - e.g. in the initial 5 min set up, it discovered my network immediately. Installations are as easy as drag-and-drop blah blah blah....

Originally Posted by dansgalaxy

Talkupation Apprieciated

Considering the original thread was about a problem with Vista, then an review of Vista seems to be a bit off topic

Originally Posted by whym

Considering the original thread was about a problem with Vista, then an review of Vista seems to be a bit off topic

hey its worth a try?



yes i know i have seen all the videos saying about all the stuff MS has blaintly nicked.

yes i know macs are very pretty i agree from design they are good. but i will stick with windows (and linux when i finally get the bloody thing installed)
as im a PC builder, i dont plan on a shop brought PC ever! and im plannign a complete rebuild of my current PC... i jsut need a (lot) of money

The problem isn't the microphone.

Under windows vista any hardware that is considered, "UN SECURED" is deactivated. By that they mean anything that might be able to use steal copyrighted content.

Basically under Windows Vista as much as 40% of your systems hardware resources are either shut down or have limited functionality. The programers figured that from the average user's point of view... Any decline in performance would be offset by the fact newer machines have more processing power and no one would notice the difference.

It is interesting to note that in all processor and hardware speed tests, given 2 identical computers...
A machine running XP clocks in at 27% faster than a machine running Vista

i know what you mean.

Also when you compare how big the OS's are its like WAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOH

i think Window 98 was like under a couple of GB (guessing that i have a 6 gb hdd from a 98) then you had XP which was like 2-4GB or somin, and then VISTA is over 10GB!!
at first i installed it on a 10GB partion and after a couple of days of using it i was having major space errors, i couldnt browse the internet because i kept getting not enough space to save the history for the webpage.