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External microphone not working with sigmatel c-major audio - inspiron 6000
Hi everybody,
I am desesperatly trying to get my external microphone working on my inspiron 6000 by connecting it to its jack plug. My OS is windows vista ultimate and the sound controller used is SigmaTel C-major audio.
When connected to its jack plug, the microphone or any other jack external microphone just won't work : nothing happens when I try to set it up under the configuration panel or when I try ot record a sound sample with the windows voice recorder.
I followed directions given in the FAQ and even tried to re-install all the audio drivers that were used under windows XP. None of those solutions were successful.
If anyone could provide me with a working solution, I would really appreciate. Thank you in advance for your help.
Laptop :
Inspiron 6000
Windows vista ultimate SP1
Pentium M 730 1.60 GHz
2 GB Ram
Controller : SigmaTel C-major audio
Jim Coates
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May 4th, 2008 02:00
The audio works okay except for the mic problem? Did the mic work when the computer's OS was XP? Your mic jack accepts a mono plug so if your mic's plug is stereo or looks just like the plug on a set of headphones it won't work. You might get it to work by inserting it partway into the jack.
Jim
Manu64fr
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May 4th, 2008 10:00
Jim,
First of all, thank you for your quick reply.
To answer your questions, all the audio under vista is working fine except for the microphone. I am not able to tell you if it was working under windows XP : I just bought the whole thing (it is a headset with one ear and a microphone). According to what you are saying, I suppose it is mono.
Inserting it partway didn't solve the problem.
Any other hints ?
Jim Coates
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May 5th, 2008 02:00
Try running the external mic test in the audio section of Dell Diagnostics. To run Diagnostics restart the computer and as soon as it starts to boot up hold down f12. Select 'Diagnostic' from the boot menu. The computer will run its pre-boot assessment tests for 3 or 4 minutes before the Dell Diagnostic starts. These pre-boot tests play some beeps and tones through the system speaker but this doesn't test the rest of the audio hardware, so you still need to let Dell Diagnostics run after the pre-boot tests finish. Dell Diagnostics plays an instrumental piece of music complete with drums, so if you only hear some tones then you have only run the pre-boot assessment test.
When Dell Diagnostics opens, select 'custom', then the audio test. This will test your audio system independently of Windows and drivers, meaning it doesn't matter if they are working correctly or not.
Dell Diagnostics will play some audio and ask you whether you heard it, etc. Eventually the external mic test should come up. If the test passes that means the hardware is okay but there is a problem with the software or configuration. If it fails that means there is a hardware problem such as:
mic doesn't work
mic works but the plug is incompatible with the jack
the jack is malfunctioning
the audio chip is malfunctioning
etc.
Jim
Because your hard drive has been reformatted probably the Diagnostics partition has been wiped. if that is the case, run it from your Resource cd, but I'm not sure if your XP Resource cd will run under Vista even though the tests are in DOS.
Manu64fr
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November 15th, 2008 06:00
Dear Jim,
I finally got a chance to perform the tasks described in your previous post.
For information, the XP Resource cd runs well under Vista.
After completing the audio test with an external microphone, the following message appears :
"Error code : 1B22:071B
Msg : the user's response indicated a failure"
Any clue about this code ?
Thanks again for your answer.
Jim Coates
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November 16th, 2008 12:00
That's good to know ... did not know it previously.
If you answer 'no' to a question during the test then the test generates an error code that means you indicated you did not hear the sounds it played, in this case you told it that you did not hear the sounds that you recorded being played back. Your response means the test had failed due to any of several hardware problems, such as
mic doesn't work
mic works but the plug is incompatible with the jack
the jack is malfunctioning
the audio chip is malfunctioning
etc.
Failure of the test is inconclusive because you still don't know what is causing the problem. As I said before your computer requires a mic with a mono plug so check that. If you can't get any mic with a mono plug to work with your computer then you should assume the problem is in the computer's hardware. The workaround for that is to get an external audio interface. Here is an example of a cheap one.
http://www.parts-people.com/index.php?action=item&id=5048