HELP! (a luddite needs your computer literacy and guidance)

[Anonymous]

My son's new chromebook (acer 11) stopped working. He can hear fine but when he speaks (using earphones or not) others hear garbled nonsense or loud crackling or nothing.

We tested zoom and google hangouts.

The earphone work fine with a phone.

What do I google or try to reboot to address this?!?

He can't participate in class right now so I have to figure this out (and don't trust him with my own laptop, if I can't!)

[Anonymous]

Sounds like a problem with the computer's microphone, not the headphones.


If you have not already, restart the machine. To do this, you typically need to hold down the power button. On my kids' Acer chrombooks, this is the only button on the side of the computer and has a light. Hold it down until a prompt pops up to restart it.

If that does not work, and you can find the settings, you can see if there are different settings you can select for the microphone and if one of them fixes it.

It could be a physical problem with the microphone itself. You could test that by plugging in an external microphone (some headphones have a microphone on the wire). You might need to go to settings and select the external microphone as the input.

If that is the issue, you are going to need to get it repaired or replaced. Or, just use an external microphone indefinitely.

[Anonymous]

Would a physical problem with the microphone show up with headphones or not with headphones? I thought the headphones were an external mic?