dead mic port?

i transferred a bunch of casettes to audacity many years ago, so i know the basic routine. now that i'm on a newer laptop, tho, i can't get so much as a SIGNAL to show up!

control panel >> sounds doesn't detect ANY input on my mic port. is this likely a hardware issue? near the jack itself, or somewhere deeper on the sound card? i tried a diff patch cord, but frankly i wouldn't really know if i had 2 duds in a row there either.

short of buying a new PC, i don't know what i can do. i was thinking of buying a mini-jack-to-USB cord as a workaround, but will my USB port likely suffer the same fate? that is, is the "input" end of my sound card fried, no matter what angle i come at it from?

my USB works fine for other things, but i have no audio devices to test it with atm. "output", fwiw (MP3s, CDs/DVDs played onboard) has never been an issue.

oh, btw - will this even get the "preamp" issue right, since ultimately it's still coming from my headphone-out jack on the casette deck?? (cheapo; no phone plugs or anything on back)

i had such great luck with headphone-out to mic-in before, but there's just no signal! #:<

audacity 1.3.12 beta, btw.

suggestions? i only have 5 tapes to transfer (stragglers from the earlier batch), and was hoping to wrap this up before i pitch the casette deck once and for all.

 

Most laptops have the Mic turned off by default to prevent feedback through the builtin Mic.

If you open your volume controls, it should be in there. You may need to look at Advanced Options or something like that.

 

No, as it turns out, it was a driver issue!

After multiple updates, rollbacks, uninstalls, etc etc, the mic jack suddenly kicked on! And the radio signal I had streaming out of my boom box sprang to life in glorious waveform on my screen!

So, like clockwork, the CASETTE half of the boombox decides to crap out on me! Unbelievable. I been using this thing for like 10 years -- including the many many test runs while I struggled to get the output seen by the laptop -- and it literally decides to call it quits the VERY FIRST ATTEMPT after I succeed at that. Seriously, the FIRST ATTEMPT -- audacity comes to life, I pop in a tape to try my first transfer, and the "play" button goes dead!

Unbelievable.