My Microphone Randomly Stopped Working on Some Games

[Therim]

Hello everyone, first of all, some details. My microphone and my ports are fine. They are functional and they are working. My microphone is attached to a headset which is the SteelSeries Arctis 3 and I have downloaded SteelSeries Engine 3. The headset is connected to the PC via two 3.5mm jacks.

 

Okay so, I have encountered this issue first at March-April. I was playing "Overwatch" a bit too much. But one day, not in mid game but after I booted my pc back up. I couldn't talk in Overwatch for some reason. The game detected my mic but it didn't receive any audio. I thought it was an error in Overwatch so I contacted the Blizzard support (which are the developers of the game) but they couldn't find a solution. Fast forward to June, I was playing "Fortnite" heavily. Unfortunately, that game also couldn't receive any audio from my mic suddenly. And recently, I was playing Garry's Mod too much and one day, it stopped receiving any audio as well. At that point, I realized that it's a fault in my system and not in the games. Wierd thing is that this becomes an issue on the games that I play too much and just suddenly happens without any warning or such. The mic works well in other games and applications such as Skype and Discord. I think that there's a windows application that's running in the background and/or any background application and/or the drivers are causing this  and/or a windows setting or firewall may be causing and I think like this because of this:

 

There's a temporary fix that I have found which sometimes work and sometimes doesn't. What I do is that I delete the audio and the microphone drivers for the headset. Then restart the PC. Then plug the headset in and lastly, run a game booster option that is in the ASUS gaming app which closes system services. These system services include still like "steamwebhelper.exe"  "Agent.exe" (Battle.net) "Battle.net.exe" and some NVIDIA programs. So, it's either related to the programmes that run in the background and/or the drivers but it may be related to a setting or a firewall issue as well.

 

Things I have tried:

 

- Turning off the firewall

- Re-installing the games

- Stopping the background applications individually

- The method I mentioned

- Checking the privacy settings

- Checking if its the default device or not and disabled applications taking exclusive control

 

 

I'm really lost at this point and considering a reset for my computer. All your help will be appreciated and have a good day

Edited July 8, 2018 by deniz.erim
added some more lines to the "Things I have tried" part

[homeap5]

1. Make sure that your microphone is system's default recording device.

2. Disable "allow applications to take exclusive control to this device" in settings (start > run > mmsys.cpl - then under "Recording" choose your recording device, click "Properties" and under "Advanced" you'll find that option).

 

 

[Therim]

9 minutes ago, homeap5 said:

1. Make sure that your microphone is system's default recording device.

2. Disable "allow applications to take exclusive control to this device" in settings (start > run > mmsys.cpl - then under "Recording" choose your recording device, click "Properties" and under "Advanced" you'll find that option).

 

 

I have tried both of them as well, forgot to add them in, sorry

[homeap5]

Try to swap mic and phones jack. Modern cards (even integrated) allow that.

[Therim]

11 minutes ago, homeap5 said:

Try to swap mic and phones jack. Modern cards (even integrated) allow that.

thing is the microphone works on applications such as Skype and Discord. I doubt that its a hardware malfunction but rather a software malfunction

[homeap5]

1 hour ago, deniz.erim said:

thing is the microphone works on applications such as Skype and Discord. I doubt that its a hardware malfunction but rather a software malfunction

Me too, it's only for checking just in case.

 

I would killing processes when microphone stops working - this way I would discover is any process causes problem.