Does anyone have sound with Vista?

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Sorry for my previous two long-winded descriptions of my "microphone
volume" problem, at the end of which I was blaming my motherboard.
Having started on this, though, I may as well continue by saying that I
have changed my mind (again) and feel that this is an issue (appropriate
to this forum) involving either/or Vista itself or buggy, supposedly
Vista-ready sound drivers. I've arrived at that conclusion by
discovering that, when booted to a hard drive loaded with XP Pro, my
microphone works fine on this system (using my SoundBlaster Audigy SE
sound card, correctly configured). This seems to me to completely rule
out any possible cause of my trouble other than buggy sound drivers
and/or a bug in Vista itself. Since I've got the latest sound drivers
(and have uninstalled and reinstalled them several times), I'm going to
look at the possibility that this issue involves a problem with my
particular installation of Vista by doing a fresh install of Vista
(after doing a Complete PC Backup), installing the necessary drivers,
fully updating Vista, and then finally installing Skype and testing the
microphone volume situation again.
 
I use two different USB microphones. They are both detected and functional.
One is from Labtek and the other is by Logitech. No drivers are necessary.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
Thanks for that information, Richard. I have just found that, on my
system, both of my microphones work fine from an PATA HD with freshly
installed XP Pro, but neither will retain their volume level (through a
reboot)from a SATA HD with freshly installed Vista Ultimate RTM. I have
also tried a USB Logitech mic from the SATA HD with Vista with the same
lousy results. Any ideas as to why I have this problem with my
microphones and Vista? It couldn't possibly have something to do with
SATA versus PATA, could it?
 
I don't see ah how what type of drive Vista is installed upon has any
bearing at all on your microphones. It is likely the USB ports, or the mike
input jacks (built in??) in your computer.

I have not checked a mike with a mini plug. It may not work here.
Asus/Nvidia are not going to update the M/B drivers for my M/B (Asus
A7N8X2.0 Deluxe). I am stuck with what comes with Vista. That may be your
problem also - inferior M/B drivers.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
Inline:

Richard said:
I don't see ah how what type of drive Vista is installed upon has any
bearing at all on your microphones. It is likely the USB ports, or the
mike input jacks (built in??) in your computer.
Click to expand...

Didn't think the type of drive was it, either. But if it's the ports, it
would have to be USB ports *and* the built-in mike input jack *and* EVEN
the mike input jack on my SoundBlaster card. What single thing could
affect *all* of those various ports?
I have not checked a mike with a mini plug. It may not work here.
Asus/Nvidia are not going to update the M/B drivers for my M/B (Asus
A7N8X2.0 Deluxe). I am stuck with what comes with Vista. That may be
your problem also - inferior M/B drivers.
Click to expand...

Could Intel's "Chipset Software" or Intel's "Management Engine Interface
driver" (both dated early November 2006 and said to be for all versions
of Windows from 2000 through Vista, including 32- and 64-bit) possibly
account for this microphone problem in *all* of the above-listed ports
(including the SoundBlaster card's microphone input jack) in Vista but
not in XP Pro?
 
I might add that I can't get my voice over the microphone to sound more
than barely audible and very crackly from Windows XP Pro in Virtual PC
2007 *within* my Vista 32-bit Ultimate RTM, either. The microphone
volume only works alright for me when I'm actually booted into XP Pro,
rather than Vista.
 
I finally got in the ASUS web site and checked for a Vista driver for
the SoundMAX chip on my board. None posted yet. I also went to the
SoundMAX site but they do not furnish any drivers. They point you to
the OEM of your mother board for drivers.
 
One of the improvements in Vista was changing the architecture of sound,
so that individual applications can have their own and separate volume
controls. That necessarily means updating the sound drivers. Without
new drivers, it basically sounds like crap.

I don't know how far Microsoft went in trying to provide generic drivers
for older equipment.
 
Didn't that already exist? I even have multiple instances of Media Player
(a main Media Player and an embedded Media Player in a Windows application)
open at the same time and they have separate volume controls - let alone if
it were completely different applications. And the WMP volume control is
always different from the Windows volume control.

Dale
 
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