Laptop's built-in microphone suddenly stopped working, but works in Live USB and Windows

[Kaz49]

Hello.

My laptop's microphone was working until at least about 4 days ago, but when I went to use it today no sound was coming through. The laptop said it had a mic connected and there was a mic volume slider, so I was very confused. I checked to make sure it wasn't muted and I tried the thing where I turn one of the stereo channels down to 0 in pavucontrol, but nothing worked. When I booted into my Windows install, the microphone was working fine.

So I got my Live USB out and booted from that to see if that would change anything, and the microphone was working there! I did a little snooping around in pavucontrol and found that the Live USB pavucontrol said that it was using "Internal microphone", while my SSD install said that "Internal microphone" was unplugged (how??) and a different non-existent microphone is plugged in. The only things I had plugged in to my laptop were a USB mouse and a charging cable. I can't be sure, but I'm fairly certain that this is the culprit.

Pavucontrol on my SSD install:


Pavucontrol on the Live USB:


I'm stumped, so help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[oshunluvr]

Have you tried booting into a previous kernel?

[claydoh]

Though Pulseaudio bits are still around and usable (pavucontrol,etc), Pipewire/Wireplumber is the actual system being used these days.

Try this to reset your audio configs, which may be out of whack for some reason, considering things work in the live session.

rename/move/delete ~/.local/state/wireplumber/
then restart pipewire:
systemctl --user restart pipewire
or possibly
systemctl --user restart pipewire-pulse

You might also look at booting to a previous kernel build from your grub boot menu

[Kaz49]

Hello, sorry for the late reply, life kind of got in the way.

I tried the systemctl thing when I saw your post a week or two ago, but it didn't fix anything. Booting from a previous kernel version didn't seem to work either.

Here's the weird thing, though. My PC froze yesterday and when I force rebooted by holding down the power button, the mic was back up and running again! I'm assuming that one of the software updates I installed in the last two weeks or so fixed it somehow.

This isn't the first time the mic has stopped working, though, it also happened earlier this year once, so I'll update if the mic decides to stop working again. Maybe I'll be able to pinpoint which software update borks the mic then.

Cheers!