OK, I have an external sound card that is plugged in via a USB port and had been working just fine. Windows recognized it as an Audio CODEC and labeled it as a microphone. Suddenly the audio from it went low almost to the point where it is unusable. I have checked and double checked all the settings that I can find and made sure that the levels are all set to 100%. Assuming the sound card is good, and I have no reason to suspect that it isn't does anyone have any ideas as to what may have changed and why? The only thing I haven't done is uninstall the drivers and re-install the external sound card and let Windows detect it an re-install it.