Internal Microphone MSI Wind U100 not working Zorin 7.1 lite

Hello everybody,

first of all, thank you for providing this great OS, that makes it possible for me to get all outdated XP-machines around a second chance! I already have installed several versions of Zorin OS on different machines, but this time i ran into a problem i could neither solve on my own, nor with reading many posts in different forums:

I have recently installed Zorin 7.1 lite on a MSI Wind U100 Netbook. Though everything else works just fine and mostly out-of-the-box, I just can't get the internal microphone working. This machine comes with an Intel HDA sound Card type ACL1200. I already checked alsamixer so that no microphone is muted, and when listening to recordings made with Skype's test call service (which is mainly why I need this microphone, for using Skype), if I turn up the mic boost, hissing and noises only get louder, but i still can't hear nothing I said.

I have tried different settings for snd-hda-intel in alsa config from e.g. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HdaIntelSoundHowto and http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1043568 and installed Pulse Audio Manager and Pavucontrol so I can have an easier look at "what is going on" while I'm recording. When looking at the bar that should show the activity of the microphone, or rather, the loudness in which I am speaking, the bar is just flickering on the left side of the bar, completely independent of what noise I am making.

Since I now am more or less shooting in the dark for I am clearly not an expert concerning sound card problems, I was hoping that you could probably lead me to a solution for my problem. Which settings am I missing?

Thank you people very much for your help!

Greetings, mindm49907

Hi and welcome to Zorin!

I should advise you that support for Zorin 6 and 7 Lite ended a while back: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=6266

However let's try to help you out where we can! I do hope that you did NOT try to change the audio settings in Skype as this can create issues. (And in view of M$ spyware in Skype I would consider a better alternative for you and your Skype buddies - https://jitsi.org/ )

Have you tried installing Pulse Audio (all packages)? Search for it in 'Synaptic Package Manager' (Menu | System Tools | Administration | Synaptic Package Manager - you will need to enter your login password to elevate your privileges to 'root')

Hello Swarfendor437,

thank you for your immediate answer. A few packages you showed were not installed yet, but installing them did unfortunately not solve my problem. I also looked if everything everywhere both in alsamixer and pulseaudio is unmuted and fully open, and then tried again.

I just recognized that within Skype, an option called "automatic sound settings" was activated, I deactivated it, but i guess Skype already messed up something then. Can I, like, reset my sound settings somewhere, and then start from new?

Thank you in advance for your answer!

Greetings, mindm49907

edit: i just tried a litte recording via arecord from a live session in Xubuntu 120.04.3, which has pulseaudio installed regularly. All I could hear as a result was static noise, but it responded somehow to my actions with clicking noises and change in loudness. I more and more think the sound card settings might be the problem, but i can't find fitting settings anywhere...

I would be tempted to remove Skype and start afresh as that could have caused the issue in the first place!

Open a terminal and enter:

Code:

sudo apt-get purge skype

you will be asked for your login password - there will be no asterisks showing so even though you think there is no keyboard response you will be inputting your password!

Next, reinstall skype with the following command:

Code:

sudo apt-get install skype

Do you have 'Audacity' installed at all? This would be one sure way to find out if the microphone is working before you start playing with Skype. If you don't have it installed, download it and see if the microphone works with Audacity which is an audio mixing/creation piece of software with 'Cassette Recorder' buttons:



After you have launched Audacity, open your sound controls and go to the microphone page to see if there is any response.

Oh, crosspost look at my edit please^^

Hi did you install all the Pulse Audio packages? And another package I remember Wolfman stating elsewhere: libsox - make sure all packages are installed via 'Synaptic Package Manager' (Menu | System Tools | Administration | Synaptic Package Manager) and in the search box middle to near top of window, enter 'libsox' to see what, if any, are installed.

Hi,

see here and the part about Skype:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2023