How to Troubleshoot “Microphone keeps muting itself” on Windows 10

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Many people have a problem with the microphone (internal and external) automatically muting. Although this problem occurs mostly in Windows 10, the microphone can stop working properly in older Microsoft products as well. Usually, the microphone works fine for a long time, but then it arbitrarily mutes and zeros out.

According to Microsoft experts, this may be due to improper sound settings or outdated device drivers. However, you should not exclude the version of malware/virus infection either. So, if you can’t talk or record anything in Skype because your microphone is automatically and constantly muted, try the following ways.

What causes my microphone to turn off all the time?

When something like this happens, it would obviously be helpful to know the immediate cause. If the microphone keeps dropping despite your attempts to adjust it to a certain volume level, the following are likely causes:

• Incorrect system sound settings.
• Malware has corrupted the sound files.
• The sound drivers have not been updated.

How to solve a microphone the keeps muting itself?

Update the microphone driver

1. Right-click on the Start button and select Device Manager in the context menu.
2. Expand the Sound, Video, and Game Controllers category, right-click the audio device you wish to update, and select Update Driver.
3. Select Automatically check for driver software updates.
4. Then follow the instructions on the screen to complete the update.
5. Windows will then automatically search for available updated drivers and install them for you.

Changing Advanced Microphone Settings

1. Right-click the speaker icon at the bottom of the notification screen and select Sound from the advanced menu.
2. Click the Communication tab of the Sound control panel.
3. Then select Do nothing when Windows detects communication activity.
4. Click Apply to apply these changes.
5. You can then check to see if the microphone continues to mute. If the problem persists, continue with the following steps.
6. Go back to the Recording tab of the Sound Control Panel, select the microphone, and click Properties.
7. Click the Advanced tab and uncheck Allow applications to have exclusive control over this device.
8. Click Apply to complete the process.

Change the format of your microphone

1. Open the Sound Control Panel again using the method described above, select the disabled microphone, and click Properties.
2. Click the Advanced tab and select the format of the other 16-bit settings from the drop-down list.
3. Click Apply to save your changes.

Stopping Svchost.exe processes

1. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager, then switch to the Details tab and sort the processes alphabetically.
2. Check if svchost.exe processes have a high CPU load. If so, you should terminate those processes.
3. Type cmd in the search box, right-click the Command Prompt application and select Run as administrator.
4. In the window that appears, type the following command and press Enter to kill all svchost.exe processes.
   taskkill /F /PID #### (Replace #### with the four digits in the PID column of the Task Manager).
5. Now check whether the microphone is disabled or not.

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Carter Blakefield