Skype stoped working

I had Skype working when I first installed 11.2 but now the mike has stopped working in Skype. The mike appears to function ( I can hear myself and the volume and boost controls seem to work.) My chip is a NVIDIA CK804. Skype is set at default sound device for all things. I can’t figure what I did to make it stop working.I really don’t use it that much and it could have been broken for weeks. Latest version of Skype beta 2.1.0.47. That has not changed.Tried reinstalling and wiping ~/.Skype directory to force a new setup. THe only thing I can think of that I have done in recent pst is play with alsamixer some. but I never did a alsacfg save so I don’t think I could have permanently messed anything. I’m using exound and not pulse.

Ok thats all I can think of any help appreciated.

You shall do these five things. They have helped in 100% of skype audio cases that I have seen.

Disable webcam’s microphone if you have one. Disable it in Yast.

Set reasonable settings in kmix. Especially important is to have activated the right capture devices.

Get the microphone working with krecord.

In skype, first get “Sound Out” and “Ringing” devices working properly.

Then try all possible settings of “Sound In” in skype.

No web cam just a mike plugged to sound card.
Mike is captured in kmix I can hear self from sound card
can not get krecord to work it is a KDE3 app so I think that is a bit shaky, But no response on input bars record appears to work but play back reports that device is busy. Is this an OSS app if so I doubt it will work on KDE4 if anything else is using the port. That was always the problem with oss it was basically one program at a time.In any case never got it working in 10.2 either.
Sound output works fine. Also Sound input worked about 2 or 3 weeks ago. Default sound device is the only one that works for output. Tried all for input, the Skype test call did not even record it dinged then immediately dinged again.

Hearing yourself through the sound card is not enough. Try to record the sound in a wav file.

Have you tried to delete, then install the sound card in Yast?

Yes reinstalled card, Reinstalled skype.

I installed krecord. It runs but the level meter does not move and I can start record but playback reports device busy. Personal settings - multimedia-backend shows Xine and Gstreamer with Xine the preferred. Device preference shows the card as fist pref for all categories. Switching to Gstreamer as perfered and Amarok stops working. PulseAudio is listed as second in all the pref output categories even though I don’t have pulse installed???

Thinking back to when I first installed and tested Skype I think I may have tested it before I installed the Multimedia codacs and things. I think I did that with the one button method so not really sure what got installed at that point. All this audio stuff seems to be turning into spaghetti.

Maybe I should try pulseAudio but I’m a little afraid that I’l break what is working.

Problems are not related to skype.

If you can, delete pulseaudio.

create a new user, see how different applications work there.

Use KDE. Get all fully working in krecord before any proceeding.

If these fail, reinstall the OS. Try to suppress installation of pulseaudio.

You keep saying get working krecord but that does not work how do you get krecord to work??? I’ve done all I can think of. Even tried running alsaconf. That sure did not work it could not find “legacy”. I do have the database installed also. Simply shut down the sound until I rebooted.

As far as I can tell pulseaudio is not installed but it still shows in the KDE personal settings multimedia setup. If I select it and test it then says it is not installed, but it still shows as an option in KDE. There where 5 lib associated with pulse, 3 with dev, one xine interface and one that seems to by tied to every KDE package. I removed the xine and dev libs. Restarted Skype still no go

I think my problem may be that I used the one click install of the media which I believe gets the packages from the videolan repository. But I don’t know how to revert just the audio packages to those in packman. If I select use package from this repository switch with packman it wants to change over 400 packages.

I keep insisting on krecord because I know the importance of it from experience.

Well, then reinstall the OS. During installation, try to block attempts of the installer to autoselect pulseaudio.

Then, after every step of package changes, updates, configuration monitor the functionality of the microphone.

If the microphone would not work, then open a new thread, but not about skype rather than about microphone not working. Skype is not at fault here.

Ok Skype is not the problem but since skype is the only thing I use the mike for it is where the problem showed up. It is also the only place I can really test if the mike is truly working. since krecord simply never worked on this machine under 10.1 or 10.2 but Skype did.

And the only solution is to reinstall OS??? How very Windowsy :’(

Reinstallation of the Os is the easiest way to go. It will take two-three days.

Meanwhile, making microphone work may take weeks.

Just a note I checked the VideoLan repository and found several new packages I upgraded but still no luck. I may need to reinstall but I think that I should have to o this is a symptom of a problem in the sound system of Linux that has been here for a long time. There are just too many sound packages and no good guide to show what works with what. If I have to reinstall anyway I may give PulseAudio a try before I do. Seems like KDE4 is really meant to use it even though many report it is broken and Suse does not ship with it. I mean what is the worst that can happen I break the sound and have to reinstall. :open_mouth:

Resolution :slight_smile:

Found the problem. Somehow the capture control got deseletcted in the mixer. It was not even showing . Went to configure and added capture to the display. Then made sure it was checked. The Mic now works.