I have a Dell Latitude 5590 laptop running unstable. At some time in the past few weeks I noticed the light was on on the keyboard's F4 key, indicating that the microphone was muted. Since I don't like my devices spying on me, I thought that was fine.
Weeks later I needed the mic, and tried to unmute it. Couldn't. Tried everything I could think of, including a different OS, and BIOS settings. So I figured it was a hardware problem, and I turned it over the our hardware folks. The hardware tech immediately was able to unmute the mic. The difference was I had logged the laptop in as a different (pre-existing) user for the tech's use. I did some experimentation afterwards, and have discovered that if user X mutes the mic, the mic then seems to be "owned" by user X, and no one and no OS can seem to unmute it. I was using the machine as user Y, which is why I couldn't unmute it, and when I handed the laptop to the hardware tech, logged in as user X, bingo! He umuted it. I don't know if this would be a kernel package bug, or an X package bug, or a keyboard-input package bug, or an audio-package bug, or .... Any ideas? Thanks! -- Kent West <")))>< Westing Peacefully - http://kentwest.blogspot.com
