Notebook Audio

At Christmas I tried to Skype some of my relatives but discovered that my integrated microphone array was not working and that they could not hear me.

I am currently on Windows 10 Professional version 1809 and bought my machine about 2009.

I started by reinstalling my original IDT HD Audio drivers but found that they would not work even after an update. I tried to configure  the microphone but the wizard could not pick up any sound. I tried using Voice recorder and Sound recorder (SndRec32) but neither picked up any sound.

I researched the net looking for solutions and tried several sets of recommended drivers but to no avail. Some posters said that there was a sound chip bug, others said that there was a bug in the Windows 10 driver. Someone said that HP had used three versions of the sound chip which were all slightly different. A number of computers had a stereo mix feature but others like mine had a rec.playback feature. Someone said they were actually the same feature but under a different name. Another poster had their machine returned to HP for diagnosis and was told there was a sound chip problem, which resulted in them getting anew laptop.

I tried lots of IDT drivers suggested but some were blocked and others said that the drivers could not support my audio hardware,

I have tried the audio troubleshooters but they can't find a problem and all the IDT drivers installed said the device was working properly  in the Device manager.

I tried the HP hardware diagnostics utility expecting to find hardware failure on my audio equipment but that was OK though my battery failed a check and no ID Failure code was given.

One thing I did notice was that the integrated microphone boost was not functioning properly. Instead of creeping gradually up the decibel scale by degrees  it jumped directly to +10 decibels at the top of the scale which was unusual as other users reported setting it at +20 and +30 decibels.

I have tried an external microphone from my desktop which works great but am still left wondering why the integrated microphone won't work.

Hopefully someone on the community will have solution or have information about the sound chips and the necessary settings to get the integrated microphone working .

Any information wouild be greatly appreciated please. T.I.A. Have a good day.