No sound on your PC (XP/Vista)
Due to the vast diversity of soundcards, chipsets and drivers and the thousands of combinations and ways something can go wrong (driver? hardware? wrong port? Vista?) we can only provide generic help for the most common sound issues. If we determine during troubleshooting, that this is a setup issue on your system, we will refer you to your PC manufacturer's hotline.
Before we begin, some basics. All PC soundcards have at least the following sound connectors: (according to PC System Design Guide)
- Speaker (not amplified) or Headset (amplified) OUT, usually green(ish) marked with a speaker or headset symbol
Note: depending of what you connect, the sound chipset present and the operating system in use this might double as Line-Out if no headset is connected and/or the sound mixer software has been set to Line-Out
- Microphone IN (amplified), usually red/pink and marked with a microphone symbol > connect your microphone here
- Line-IN (not amplified), usually blue(ish), symbol not standardized > this you would connect your HiFi equipment to (PLAY/OUT on a Stereo amplifier) Important: Microphones will NOT work.
Note: depending of the sound chipset present and the operating system in use the blue(ish) connector might double as Line-OUT
Laptops usually only have 2 connectors: Mic in and Headset/Speaker out.
Same standardized color coding here. Red/pink is for microphone in, green/light green is for headphones/speakers out.
Ok, let's get to work. Make sure, you connect your microphone to the proper microphone-in jack on your computer. if you have one in the front of your computer and one in the back, please use the one in the back first! Reason: The front connector could just be inoperative by a simple cabling issue, the back plane connector always works though.
After you connected the microphone and the headset/speaker connectors click with your right mouse button on the tiny speaker icon in the tray area (lower right corner of your windows screen, next to the digital clock).
(If you do not have this icon in your tray bar, click on either a) Start > Control Panel > Sounds, Speech and Audio Devices > Sounds and Audio Devices or b) Start > Settings > Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices)
Then click on Adjust Audio Properties.
This dialog box should come up. Click on the Voice tab and then on the Test Hardware button.
Click on NEXT to start the sound hardware check. This will take some time.
If you do not get any error message, your computer sound hardware and installed sound driver software seems to be ok.
Using your microphone, speak into it and check if the volume meter on the screen shows any reaction. If it does, your microphone works fine.
Click on next.
Now test if you can hear what you are speaking into the microphone. If that works too, you are done.
If you get an error like this, Windows could not detect ANY sound input from your microphone.
Try the troubleshooting steps discussed here 2.1 Sound Mixer and here 2.2 Sound Card troubleshooting.
