Hi, The built in mic on my laptop, which worked perfectly when I first bought it, has since given up on me. I've read alot of forums and Q&A's saying to make sure the device isn't muted and as far as I can tell it's not, although finding the audio levels for the mic on Vista is pretty difficult to do. Or maybe I'm just blind. Anyway, from what the computer tells me the drivers are up to date and the device is working correctly but when recording, it doesn't pick up on any sound at all. Can anyone shed some light on this, please? Keith

was Vista what shipped on this laptop originally, or have you reinstalled/upgraded the OS? Because it definitely sounds like a driver issue, and if the mic is built in, it's probably the chipset drivers you should be concerned with (unless there's a specific listing for it in the device manager).

Vista was already installed on this laptop when I bought it. But the operating system has had to be reinstalled in the past due to a faulty hard drive. Everything else worked perfectly afterwards so I didn't really tie my mic not working with the OS having to be reinstalled. There isn't a specific listing for it in Device Manager, it's under High Definiton Audio Device.

after you reinstalled, did you download the latest drivers from Dell's website? Check in system properties and determine if your Vista is 32 or 64 bit, and make sure you're downloading the drivers for the right OS. Are there any yellow triangles with question marks in the Device Manager, or is everything showing up as fine?

I am having the same issues (I also had a faulty hard drive when I first purchased the computer), but I updated my drivers, and checked to see if anything was working improperly -- and it's not! I can't get my built-in mic to work.