XPS External Microphone Doesn't Work

Why don't you use the built in microphone? All laptops have them. Check the sound settings by right clicking on the speaker icon lower right. Tell us your exact model XPS for more help.

He probably doesn't use the internal microphone because it doesn't sound good. The question wasn't why would you want to use a nice external microphone, it was why can't he use his nice external microphone.

I'm not having the same problem, but I'm having similar issues. Are you connecting your microphone to the headphone jack, or through USB?

Correct, I record videos regularly for Youtube - the internal microphone is poor quality so I use a professional external USB one.

I've discovered that I can get the microphone to temporarily work when I uninstall the Realtek drivers. However, as soon as I disconnect my microphone and reconnect it, it doesn't work again. It's so frustrating! Further, the audio quality sounds dreadful when i play it back. This is a driver issue as when I listen to the audio i've recorded on my Surface Pro, it sounds perfect. I'm trying to update tothe Realtek High Definition drivers on the Dell site, but they never seem to install, they say High Definition then after 20 seconds or so it reverts back to the old drivers. 

I just spent 2 hours again with tech support trying to get my external mic working. The previous session we upgraded the firmware and bios, and had to wipe the computer and reinstall windows 10. Yesterday we started again trying to fix the problem, and we might have fixed it. For me the mic would work for just under 3 minutes before turning to a junk signal, and it does look like the Realtek drivers are to blame. With a fresh windows 10, updated with all the latest drivers, we then had to go onto dell's website and download the latest realtek drivers. Then we went into device manager, found the realtek usb controller and manually told it to update the driver to the new one we just installed. Then we did it for the intel soundbridge as well.

I think it now might be fixed for me, but I haven't tried to see if it was working today (cuz I've been working on my old computer and am just now getting to it).

Noooooooooooooooooo. Mine is still broken too. I'll try your trick of reinstalling manually every time I boot up or plug it in, and see if that helps. Wow, I can't believe how bad this is.