My Surface laptop says Microphone allay disabled

Hi Ian Egan

Thanks for posting in the Microsoft Q&A Forum!

It’s really frustrating when your Surface insists the microphone is disabled even though everything “looks” correct. Don't you worry as the fixes below usually resolve it.

Re‑enable or refresh the microphone in Device Manager

Even if it says “working properly,” the audio input endpoint might be disabled behind the scenes.

• Open Device Manager
• Expand Audio inputs and outputs
• Right‑click your Microphone Array or Internal Microphone
• If you see Enable device, choose it
• If not, select Disable, then Enable to force Windows to refresh it

Update the real audio driver (not the APO entry)

The APO entry isn’t the microphone driver, the important one is under “Sound, video and game controllers.”

• In Device Manager, expand Sound, video and game controllers
• Find Realtek(R) Audio, Surface Audio Codec, or similar
• Right‑click → Update driver → Search automatically This often restores the missing input device.

Reset the Windows audio service stack

This forces Windows to rebuild audio endpoints. Please open Command Prompt (as Administrator), then run these commands one by one:

net stop audiosrv 
net stop AudioEndpointBuilder 
net start AudioEndpointBuilder 
net start audiosrv

Hope these will help. Feel free to update here if there's any progress!

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