Low Mic Volume, Win 7 Starter

Hi all, newbie here. I found this site via a recommendation at MetaFilter.

I'm trying to solve a problem with very low microphone volume on my girlfriend's ASUS netbook, running Windows 7 Starter. Unfortunately, I'm trying to solve the problem long-distance and it's been frustrating for both of us. And I only have an XP machine and am unfamiliar with 7, which increases the troubleshooting difficulty on my end.

The headset is the type that uses 1/8" jacks. It works fine on her XP laptop, but the volume when chatting with Skype on the netbook is way too low, with tons of background noise. We've set the levels to max, including max boost, but even then I have to turn my volume up until the background noise is uncomfortably loud while struggling to hear her.

Searching, I found this page that seemed to solve the problem by setting the recording quality to tape or dictation (from DVD): http://www.21apps.com/uncategorized/low-mic-volume-in-vista-64bit/ The only options we see on her netbook, however, are DVD and CD. It was on DVD but setting to CD didn't help any.

Any ideas on how to solve this would be hugely appreciated, by both me and my girlfriend. Thanks!

 

There's a setting in Skype's options that can cause this. In Skype, click tools>options and then on general. Under general, you'll see audio. Click it and if the line that says "automatically adjust microphone settings" is checked, uncheck it and then set the mic to the volume level you want it at. Then give it a try. No guarantees though. I've run into this a lot with Skype. For some reason, some systems will work fine after unchecking that line and others will still want to turn the volume down. Not sure what the problem is. My guess is it's a bug in Skype of some type. Or, something in Skype combined with the sound card drivers. Anyway, give it a try and see what happens.

 

Tried unchecking the Skype automatically adjust volume but that didn't seem to help. I'm not sure how to find a different driver for her computer. I stopped at a computer store the other day and tried out a similar ASUS with Win 7 and I looked for all the different volume settings but everything I found she already had set to max.

 

It's an ASUS 1005P. Thanks!

 

Is the audio from say utube working ok? I was reading some reveiws of the same asus and someone commented that the 1/8" female plug on the asus was bad. In his case though there was no audio at all....

 

Oddly, enough, Flash doesn't seem to be working at all on the netbook. The internal mic works okay so that's what we've been doing now. Maybe it's a problem with the 1/8" jack. One possibility might be just getting a USB headset for her. I've had good luck with a Microsoft headset.