1

I'm putting together instructions for our users to test their microphones. Vista and 7 changed the Sound Recorder so it doesn't play back sound. Hence it's not good for testing sound (they have to save the file, find it, open it, inevitably get the Windows Media Player "first time" experience... at which time they've forgotten what they were doing).

The only other option I see for testing the Microphone is to click Start> Control Panel> Sound> Microphone > Configure> Set up Microphone (and hope that they don't have their Control panel in Classic setup.

I know there are ways to launch the Sound dialog via the command line like this.

Any ideas?

Community
  • 1
Clay Nichols
  • 1,391
  • 6
  • 24
  • 30

4 Answers4

2

You should be able to do this with: control mmsys.cpl sounds

JPerkSter
  • 285
  • 2
  • 12
2

The Set up your Microphone wizard is hidden in the SpeechUX.dll. You can call SpeechUX.dll like so:

rundll32.exe "%windir%\system32\speech\speechux\SpeechUX.dll", RunWizard Tutorial (Speech Recognition Tutorial)
rundll32.exe "%windir%\system32\speech\speechux\SpeechUX.dll", RunWizard UserTraining (Voice Training)
rundll32.exe "%windir%\system32\speech\speechux\SpeechUX.dll", RunWizard MicTraining (Microphone Training)
rundll32.exe "%windir%\system32\speech\speechux\SpeechUX.dll", RunWizard UserEnrollment (Set Up Speech Recognition)

So you basically want: rundll32.exe "%windir%\system32\speech\speechux\SpeechUX.dll", RunWizard MicTraining

Dennis G
  • 588
  • 3
  • 6
  • 20
  • Confirmed that at least MicTraining one works on both Windows Vista and Windows 7. – Clay Nichols Oct 22 '10 at 20:56
  • It turns out that this is not a very helpful test because it does not give you an option to configure the microphone. So, it's useful for us to be able to point out to the customer that it's a problem with their microphone not our software, but if Microsoft had just included a link to adjust the Microphone volume it would have been a useful Wizard. – Clay Nichols Oct 22 '10 at 21:11
0

Control mmsys.cpl sounds doesn't work on Windows 7 (for me at any rate). It just pulls up the same default Sound Control Panel applet as mmsys.cpl does by default.

You can make it somewhat easier for your users by creating a shortcut that links directly to the wizard (or a link to a shortcut). In Windows 7 (and probably in Vista, can't be sure as I don't have access to a copy right now) you can create a shortcut to an item in the Control Panel by opening up the new Control Panel interface, searching for Microphone and then drag the "Set up a Microphone Link" to your desktop or a folder. You can then put it somewhere that they can access and send them a link to that.

Helvick
  • 19,579
  • 4
  • 37
  • 55
  • Are you doing this from the RUN dialog or the Search: dialog (brought up by click Start)? it works in the latter but not the former (for me on Win 7) – Clay Nichols Feb 27 '10 at 03:01
  • I I try it in the Seach: Dialog I get nothing at all, however if I search for Microphone from there it finds the direct link to the Wizard immediately so that seems like a better approach for you. – Helvick Feb 27 '10 at 15:20
0

Thanks to jPerkster for pointing me in the right direction. Didn't occur to me to look for command line parameters here.

mmsys.cpl ,n NOTE: the space before the "," is absolutely needed or Windows thinks you're trying to launch mmsys.cpl, and you get an error n=

1 for recording

2 for Sounds

StackOverflow also has a similar way to do this programatically.

Community
  • 1
Clay Nichols
  • 1,391
  • 6
  • 24
  • 30