Microphone and bluetooth not working at all

Ubuntu
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My machine is a dual boot Ubuntu 22.04 and Windows 11

Microphone is not detected at all, I got audiopulse and followed many online instructions to no avail (pulseaudio and all that)
I plugged in my headphones, I can hear sound, but I cannot record audio.

Bluetooth goes on and detects my headphones and other devices, but never connects. I’ve also tried all sorts of online instructions and it’s still not working.

They’re working fine on W11.

What can I do? Thanks!

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Simple solution? Get rid of Ubuntu!!!

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Hi @Sappho ,
The hardware is obviously OK, because it works under Win.
Sometimes Linux does not load drivers for devices when it boots.
This happens for 2 reasons

  • Linux does not detect the device
  • Linux does not have a driver for the device

We can sometimes see what is going on at boot time by doing
sudo dmesg
There will be a lot of output.
You need to look through it for evidence of it detecting the microphone and bluetooth devices.

Other than that, you can see if hardware has been detected using the lshw command. You will probably have to install lshw… most distros dont have it by default.

For bluetooth you ought to check its configuration, and check that bluez package is installed.

For microphone, it is usually driven by the sound card, so , because you have sound, it may be just that pulseaudio is not configured properly.

That is about all we can do without more details. You need to do some looking.
Regards
Neville

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I just read a couple different cases on Reddit where Nvidia drivers were causing issues with other things, like sound. I don’t know if this computer even has an Nvidia device, but in those cases they did not currently have one. The driver was installed though and that caused the issue.

Maybe you could check for messages like Nev said. If there are Nvidia related messages either update the Nvidia driver or maybe remove it if possible. There are drivers from Nvidia and an opensource version, nouveau.

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For my part i would install the multimedia options which may solve your issues

Here is a detailed step by step guide

But i would also go along with my fellow members comments on sourcing the error.

Sadly the suggestion on dont use ubuntu was not helpful for anybody.

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Although in linux mint, there is a similar question on the site already

And given the cost of mic and headphones easy option

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It’s complex device supporting A2DP as well as HFP. I don’t know, but my educated guess is that Ubuntu chooses automatically A2DP for better audio quality in your headphones. That profile is incompatible whith mics, so if you need mic too, force choosing HFP profile. That setting should be somewhere in Blueman, or whatever BT manager Ubuntu uses…

Edit:

Probably it’s worth to read this.

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I had something similar with my Thinkpad E495. Only thing was I NEVER even booted the windows 10 it came with (ebay purchase) - I formatted it and installed probably Ubuntu (was 2-3 years ago now) - it’s now running Pop!_OS 22.04. So I could never really say if WiFi / BT worked okay in Windows.

Anyway - WiFi was hideous on it - and Bluetooth barely ever worked, if at all… Was so frustrating!

Noticed the Chipset for the WiFi / BT module (PCIe card) - it was Realtek - HIDEOUS REALTEK! I detest trying to use these on Linux. You can get them to work better by getting the driver source and compiling - but - that’s fine for Gentoo users - not me - I rebuild my machines sometimes every 2-3 months - compiling a driver, each time? GTFOOH!

My desktop machine (now also running Pop!_OS - but was probably Ubuntu 20.04 back then) has a PCIe WiFi and BT combo card too - Intel chipset - no intervention required - IT JUST WORKS!

So - I got an Intel chipset PCIe (form factor for laptops PCIe) from Amazon (about $20 - i.e. beer or coffee money) - installed it - WiFi and BT problems WENT AWAY!

Probably not what you wanted to hear - but that’s how I solved my issue.

Also if you could provide the output from “inxi -Eaz” it should show what your BlueTooth chipset is :

Here’s my desktop machine :

╭─x@titan ~/ResilioSync/bigshit  
╰─➤  inxi -Eaz
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Intel AX200 Bluetooth type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8
    bus-ID: 3-6.3:7 chip-ID: 8087:0029 class-ID: e001
  Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: up address: <filter>
    bt-v: 3.0 lmp-v: 5.2 sub-v: 20f9 hci-v: 5.2 rev: 20f9
  Info: acl-mtu: 1021:4 sco-mtu: 96:6 link-policy: rswitch sniff
    link-mode: peripheral accept
    service-classes: rendering, capturing, audio, telephony

and my Thinkpad E495 :

╭─x@fenrix ~  
╰─➤  inxi -Eaz
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Intel AX210 Bluetooth type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8
    bus-ID: 3-1:2 chip-ID: 8087:0032 class-ID: e001
  Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: down
    bt-service: enabled,running rfk-block: hardware: no software: yes
    address: <filter>
  Info: acl-mtu: 1021:4 sco-mtu: 96:6 link-policy: rswitch sniff
    link-mode: peripheral accept

If it’s of any interest - that desktop one - the AX200 - seems a bit better behaved (WiFi) than the laptop one (Fenrix : AX210) - that could be the laptop antenna I don’t know (snapping those antenna connectors onto laptop WiFi card is a tricky operation - I needed a magnifying glass!).

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