Another dumb omputer question.

[Don Henthorn Smithville, TX]

Installed a cheap Diamond DT-688 sound card some time ago and can't record with the mic. Everything else seems ok, Checked the mic at radio shack and it is ok. I am using a reducing plug to take the 1/4' plug down to the computer plug size. I have all the volume controls I can find turned up as high as they will go. At first I was able to record but had to turn the volume up full to hear anything. Now I don't get anything. I reinstalled the drivers a couple of times which didn't help, but now I am getting this strange message on boot up,"There is no disk in the drive. Please insert disk into drive\Device\Harddisk2\Dr5." Sounds crazy to me. Any ideas?

[Chuck Wintle]

A couple of questions first
What Operating ststem are you using?
What kind of mic is it?

I would then uninstall the card by going to Control Panel and going into Add/Remove hardware. Once the cardhas been uninstalled reboot and let windows detect the card. See what happens. I remember I installed the same card on a friends computer and had to run setup from the install disk to preload the drivers. Then when Windows detected the card I could then go to the folder where the drivers folder.

[Lee Schierer]

Don, when you open the volume controls, click on options to open the input control panel, it is normally not shown. Chances are the microphone is muted or not turned up. Same thing about drove me nuts when I tried hooking a mic to my computer.

[Don Henthorn Smithville, TX]

Thanks for the replies. I am running Xp and the mic is a Radio Shack Highball 7. It worked fine with the old sound card.

Lee, I did find that the mic volume control was not shown on the volume consul, but checking the box to make is appear showed that the mic was on and the volume up. Another curious thing which I can't solve is that if I go to Control panel Sounds and audio devices and click on audio and then recording devices the volume adjustment box opens way to the left on the screen with only the red X showing. I can't seem to drag it to where I can see it. Have no idea how to get it to where I can read it.

I plan to go to Radio Shack this afternoon and get a cheap mic made for computer to see if that helps. But I am frosted that the mike worked ok with the old sound card but not the new one. Grrrrrr.