This customer wanted to run Skype, but couldn’t get the microphone part to work (she tried 3 different microphones).

When I get there, I notice the PC is really slow.

I also notice that the sound is “tinny”. I’m told that while fiddling with the microphone settings in windows, the the sound seemed to get altered.

I take a look at the sound settings, and see that some equalizer settings had been altered… change it back to normal, and the sound is better, but still not quite right.

I leave the sound for the moment, and take a look at the microphone settings.

According to windows, everything is normal.

I try sound recorder, but it just records silence.

I note a lot of unusual programs running, and I find 2 spyware programs running. The scan takes a while, so I return the following day to complete the work.

After removing the spyware, I check the bios settings, but everything seems normal there also.

OK, as a last resort, I install a new sound card… and that fixes both the sound and the recording problem.

In cases like this, its difficult to know what is the best order to do things.

From past experience, faulty sound is usually the result of spyware, so I scan and remove spyware before suspecting an unlikely hardware failure.