Help:Enabling disabled sound devices in Vista

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This help page belongs to Help category Video

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Enabling disabled sound devices in Vista

Only Microphone and Line In inputs visible in Windows Vista.

A typical problem with sound recording in Windows Vista is that the required mixer devices are disabled by default. Normally Vista only allows you to select between Microphone and Line In inputs, neither of them being very good ways to get your in-game audio recorded to videos. This typical situation is visible on the screenshot to the right, only two choices are available for Xfire.

However, most sound hardware drivers actually allow you to enable mixer devices that can be used to directly record the sound you hear from your speakers, i.e. your game sounds. To be able to use these in Xfire you need to first enable them. This document is to help you enabling these devices in Windows Vista.

Note: the sound device names are different in different computers. The screen shots in this document are made in Virtual PC, so the sound card is named Microsoft Virtual Machine Audio Device Driver. In your case the name is very likely something else, but that does not invalidate these instructions.


Step 1: Access Control Panel from the Start menu:

Only Microphone and Line In inputs visible in Windows Vista.


Step 2: Switch to Classic View and double click on the Sound icon:

Windows Vista Control Panel in Classic View illustrating where to find the Sound icon.


Step 3: Switch to Recording tab and right click on the box listing the current devices and select Show Disabled Devices from the context menu that appears:

Windows Vista Sound settings on Recording tab showing the context menu where Disabled Devices can be made visible.


Step 4: You should now see all the sound devices the system can provide. Right click on the disabled device you want to enable and choose Enable from the menu that appears:

Windows Vista Sound settings on Recording tab showing the context menu where a disabled device can be enabled.

To mimimize problems with Xfire you might also want to try setting the selected device to be the default mixer by clicking on it and then clicking on Set Default button. The default device is marked with the green symbol, in the above screenshot Microphone is selected as default.

After you press OK the newly enabled device should also appear in Xfire's options. Note that you need to re-open the Xfire Options window for Xfire to show the changes made in Control Panel.

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