- Sep 10, 2012
- 6
- 0
- 10,510
This is going to be a lot of words for what seems like a really simple problem to fix, but I just want to properly explain all the stuff I've already tried and why I'm coming to a tech support forum. Also I'm not sure if I'm in the right forum, but I couldn't find one for sound issues. I'm running Windows 7.
I got a cheap gaming headset, the kind that comes with two cables - a pink one and a green one - that I plug into the corresponding 3.5 mm jacks on the back of my tower. Yesterday I rolled away from my desk quickly and accidentally unplugged the thing in the middle of a game. When I plugged it back in, my friend I was playing with told me what was coming out of her headset in place of my voice was all the game sound and really loud. There wasn't any sound out of my headphones at all.
So I go into the Sound window in the control panel and start messing with stuff, enabling and disabling. No dice. I tried plugging the regular speakers back in, I couldn't even get it to play sound out of those. I ended up uninstalling like every sound device, hoping that a reboot would get the system to recognize new hardware and re-install drivers for them. That worked for the regular speakers and the headphones portion of the headset, but it still doesn't seem to understand the microphone.
Now when I go into the Sound window, here's what I got:
The computer treats both the speakers and the headphones as the "Speakers" thing there, and as long as it's enabled, sound will come out of whichever device occupies the green 3.5 mm jack on the back of the tower. Fine with me. I don't know what the "Digital Audio (S/PDIF)" is, and I'm unsure if it's relevant. If I click the "Recording" tab, here's what shows up:
It detects the presence of a microphone, and seems to think it's working fine. The microphone doesn't function. I can scream into the mic and the sound level bar there doesn't register a blip. It doesn't detect exactly what kind of microphone it is, and I'm not sure if that's a problem. I'll admit I don't know what make and model it is either, or else I'd have tried to dig up a driver or something from the manufacturer - the headset is perplexingly devoid of identifying marks and I don't recognize the logo. If I dig my way to the driver settings and try to get Windows 7 to automatically update the driver, it tells me everything's already up to date. Here's details on the driver, I guess:
Now here's the weird part. If I got the headset plugged in instead of the regular speakers and play sound, the sound level bar next to the microphone does pick something up. It doesn't get as high as the bar next to the "Speakers" (actually the headphones, when they're plugged in), but it seems to be aware of something. This actually corroborates what my friend had said earlier, that it sounded to her like game sound was coming through my mic instead of my voice.
So I'm in this weird position now where my computer seems to be treating my microphone as speakers and is unaware of the mix up. I don't know how to go about finding a driver for this specific headset, and I'm unsure if I ever even had to. Uninstalling and reinstalling various sound devices doesn't seem to work. I'm pretty sure I don't have something in settings somewhere telling the mic to be muted.
Sorry for the super long post, this is driving me nuts.
I got a cheap gaming headset, the kind that comes with two cables - a pink one and a green one - that I plug into the corresponding 3.5 mm jacks on the back of my tower. Yesterday I rolled away from my desk quickly and accidentally unplugged the thing in the middle of a game. When I plugged it back in, my friend I was playing with told me what was coming out of her headset in place of my voice was all the game sound and really loud. There wasn't any sound out of my headphones at all.
So I go into the Sound window in the control panel and start messing with stuff, enabling and disabling. No dice. I tried plugging the regular speakers back in, I couldn't even get it to play sound out of those. I ended up uninstalling like every sound device, hoping that a reboot would get the system to recognize new hardware and re-install drivers for them. That worked for the regular speakers and the headphones portion of the headset, but it still doesn't seem to understand the microphone.
Now when I go into the Sound window, here's what I got:
The computer treats both the speakers and the headphones as the "Speakers" thing there, and as long as it's enabled, sound will come out of whichever device occupies the green 3.5 mm jack on the back of the tower. Fine with me. I don't know what the "Digital Audio (S/PDIF)" is, and I'm unsure if it's relevant. If I click the "Recording" tab, here's what shows up:
It detects the presence of a microphone, and seems to think it's working fine. The microphone doesn't function. I can scream into the mic and the sound level bar there doesn't register a blip. It doesn't detect exactly what kind of microphone it is, and I'm not sure if that's a problem. I'll admit I don't know what make and model it is either, or else I'd have tried to dig up a driver or something from the manufacturer - the headset is perplexingly devoid of identifying marks and I don't recognize the logo. If I dig my way to the driver settings and try to get Windows 7 to automatically update the driver, it tells me everything's already up to date. Here's details on the driver, I guess:
Now here's the weird part. If I got the headset plugged in instead of the regular speakers and play sound, the sound level bar next to the microphone does pick something up. It doesn't get as high as the bar next to the "Speakers" (actually the headphones, when they're plugged in), but it seems to be aware of something. This actually corroborates what my friend had said earlier, that it sounded to her like game sound was coming through my mic instead of my voice.
So I'm in this weird position now where my computer seems to be treating my microphone as speakers and is unaware of the mix up. I don't know how to go about finding a driver for this specific headset, and I'm unsure if I ever even had to. Uninstalling and reinstalling various sound devices doesn't seem to work. I'm pretty sure I don't have something in settings somewhere telling the mic to be muted.
Sorry for the super long post, this is driving me nuts.
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