# Solved: Toshiba internal microphone suddenly not working



## emilyw28 (May 5, 2008)

I've had this Toshiba Satellite L500 for over a year and the internal mic has always worked great. I often use Skype on this machine and the mic always works fine. The other day my friend added Skype to his iPhone and we wanted to see if it worked, but because we were in the same room, there was some feedback (not much, but a little), so we hung up. Half an hour later, I tried to use Skype to call a friend back home, and the mic wasn't working. It hasn't worked since.

I uninstalled Skype and re-installed all of the audio drivers. I have also tried adjusting all of the Sound settings in Control Panel (mic volume, boost, default device, etc.). I also tried using an external mic, which worked fine, and I was able to switch back and forth between the external and the internal, but only the external picked anything up. When I use Sound Recorder with the internal mic, all that's recorded is a quiet, garbled, electronic noise which fades to silence within a few seconds (see .rar attachment). *EDIT*: I found that this noise was due to using Microphone Boost. If I turn the boost off, nothing at all is recorded.

Device Manager says the internal mic is working fine. Is there anything else I can do? Is there some kind of software that I can run to test if the microphone is working properly or is broken? I am running Windows Vista 64-bit.


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## emilyw28 (May 5, 2008)

So under "Playback Devices" I turned the microphone playback volume up so I could hear through the speakers if anything was being picked up. At one point I close the lid of my laptop and heard some crackling. Turns out if I move the lid up and down, the microphone crackles, so I'm guessing there's a loose connection in there somewhere. It's too bad because it's not an old machine, and I still have no idea why it stopped working so suddenly.

Just thought I would update you all and suggest a possible troubleshooting method for those of you in the same situation. Of course, be careful of using microphone playback without headphones, since it can lead to feedback which can damage your audio components.


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