Windows10Home: does not see Blue Snowball

[G.Moberg]

I have a Blue Snowball microphone. It works great on my ASUS notebook that runs Win10 and a much older Dell Latitude that runs Win/XP. And the same microphone used to work without any problem on my Dell XPS 8900 running Win 10 Home.

At some point something gone awry with Win10 on the XPS 8900 being able to accept the Snowball. I do not know when this started. I am getting some error messages which might help.

On the XPS 8900, I go to the Win10 device manager, select the Blue Snowball and uninstall it. I have it unplugged at this point. I then restart the computer. When it comes up, I plug in the Snowball.

Once I log in, I right-click the sound icon in the icon tray of the task bar. From this I select 'Recording devices'.
The 'Sound' dialog appears. It shows "Microphone / Blue Snowball / Default device" and it has a green check on its icon.

I've been trying to test whether Win10 and the Snowball are working by doing this:

1. I right-click on this and select 'Configure Speech Recognition'.
2. This opens the Control Panel -> All Control Panel Items -> Speech Recognition window.
3. I click 'Start Speech Recognition' option.
4. I get a pop-up "The Wizard could not start / Make sure your audio hardware is working propertly and check your audio configuration in the Audio Devices and Sound Themes control panel".

To try and figure out what is wrong I do:

1. Back on the 'Sound' panel, where it shows the Blue Snowball as my only listing and as my defautl microphone, I again do a right-click and select 'Properties'.
2. The 'Microphone Properties' window appears. It says Controller Information' for 'Blue Snowball (Generic ASB)' and Device Usage says "use this device (enable)". On this window I click 'Properties.'
3. The 'Blue Snowball Properties' window opens. The 'Device Status' is 'This device is working properly.'
4. I select the Events tab of this window, and here is where I think I am getting some clues.
5. I have 4 messages, I'll give them here in chronological order. The timestamps line up with when I restarted the computer.

[0] "Device deleted" <-- this lines up, timewise, with then I uninstalled the device and then started the reboot of the computer.
[the computer is restarted] [I plug in the Snowball to any of the XPS 8900's USB ports (doesn't matter which one)]
[1] "Driver Management concluded the process to install driver cmusbdac.inf_amd64_blahblahblah for Device Instance ID USB\VID_blahblahblah with the following status: 0x0.
[2] "Driver Management has concluded the process to add Service CMUSBDAC for Device ID USB\VID_blahblahblah with the following status; 0
[3] "Device USB\VID_blahblahblah could not be migrated." <--- what does this mean?
[4] "Device USB\VID_blahblahblah requires further installation."

Do I need to flush something else in addition to doing an Uninstall from the Device Manager? Is there a second layer that has to be reset before this XPS 8900 can resume accepting the Snowball as a microphone? It is good that 1) the XPS 8900 sees the device when I plug it in 2) the Windows10 on the XPS 8900 sees that it is a micophone. But I do not understand what is going wrong after that point.

 

[Regedit32]

Hi and Welcome to the Forum.

Have you tried running the built in tool to fix audio playback issues, or audio recording issues?

Just type fix audio in your search/Cortana field and the top two results are worth trying.

Also, it might be worth going to manufacture website of this Blue Snowball to see whether they offer any newer drivers to work with Windows 10.

I use a Logitech mic, on an older computer using IDT Codecs. The latest drivers for that don't appear to work so well in Windows 10, but after choosing to update drivers via Device Manager, and saying let me pick one, I swapped it to Microsoft's HD Audio Device, and while this is not perfect, the volume levels work now, where previously they did not.

It may be as simple as using a default Microsoft driver instead of Blue Snowball ones that will get things working for you. Do check the manufacturer site though.

Regards,

Regedit32

 

[G.Moberg]

I should add that last fall (approx August 2016), this Dell XPS 8900 running Win10Home was working with the Blue Snowball without any problem. We were using the Snowball to do voice recordings. So, this is case where the Win10 or the XPS 8900 has lost the ability to see/connect-to the Snowball. I do not know when things stopped working.

Win10Home has been the only OS on this computer; this was not an upgrade from another OS or prior Windows version. I've only had this issue on this one computer. My other systems work with the Snowball and there are no problems.

 

[G.Moberg]

@Regedit32; thank you for the suggestion. I will try this and post the outcome.

 

[G.Moberg]

Okay, I tried "fix audio" and this led me to discover that there is no working audio on this Dell XPS 8900. None. However there used to be. It used to play just fine, sending audio up the HDMI connection to our TV, which is the monitor for this computer.

Next, I plugged in a Logitech USB headphone/mic set that I use all the time on my Win10 ASUS notebook. I found that this goes down the same path above as the Snowball experienced. I get the "device not migrated" at the same point where above I saw it for the Snowall... down in the "Logitech USB Headset H340 Perperties" window's "Events" tab.

As a simple test, I tried playing things on youtube.com and got nothing. Whether attempting external speakers or HDMI to the TV or to a headset - nothing makes a peep when connected.

From this I realize it is not a problem with the Snowball. Somehow this XPS 8900 / Win10 has no clue how to play or record. It was fully able to do so a couple months ago but at some point thereafter something has gone wrong.

 

[Regedit32]

Here's a link for Dell with your model.

It's got the update drivers for Windows 10 64-bit on this page, but you can change the OS if its 32-bit

Looks to me like there is an Audio update, that would be worth getting.

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/xps-8900-desktop/drivers/advanced

 

[G.Moberg]

Yes, starting with the Audio update. Thanks! Shall see how this goes.

 

[G.Moberg]

Upated the BIOS and then the audio. Unfortunately no change. It remains that the computer cannot make a sound nor hear anything. I checked the Windows Services and verifyied both Windows Audio services are running by default and are indeed running. Yet, the 'fix audio' tests lead later on to suggest that these two audio services are not running or perhaps not working.

 

[Norton]

Strange! If it was working a few months ago, it could possibly be an update that caused audio driver problems.
Have yo tried rolling back the driver?

 

[G.Moberg]

I resolved the problem by re-installing Win10 from scratch. I went to Dell.com and got the Win10 image that is to be used for this specific box (a Dell XPS 8900) and used this to start from, well, scratch. The 'new' system sees the Snowball without problem. I'm enjoying have to re-add all the software products (Office, etc.) and add back the user accounts. A bit drastic, yes, but this was but one problem the system was having.