gnome-volume-control does not recognise external hardware. My headphones work nonetheless, but an external microphone does not. External microphones used to work, but at times were temperamental - I would have to login or logout with or without microphone plugged in. I am running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) on an mSi U100 wind notebook with one Intel soundcard and trying to use a jack microphone which has worked previously. USB microphones have also been problematic. I have done the basics: Installed upgrades. Checked nothing is muted. Looked for the device on gnome-volume-control. Tried using a different microphone that works on a friends computer. Tested my microphone works when using a different computer. Checked my soundcard can be seen (cat /proc/asound/cards). I have done more complicated things: I have tried playing around with settings in alsamixer. Nothing is muted. I can adjust "mic" and "internal mic" regardless of whether an external microphone is plugged in. I have the choice of input source from "mic", "front mic", "line" and "CD". I've played around changing this and it hasn't helped. I only have one CAPTURE option. In gnome-sound-recorder I have the choice of line, microphone 1 and microphone 2. I have played around changing this option. None of these pick up sound from the external microphone. Microphone 2 is the microphone on my laptop which is bad quality. In gnome-sound-recorder I have the choice of different profiles, and changing this has not helped either. I have looked at gstreamer-properties but none of that seemed helpful. I don't know if there a way to check if these external devices are being picked up. I would like to make an external microphone work. Please help!