Game Bar keeps muting my mic whenever i alt tab

piqseu · Apr 24, 2023

So, I decided to give the clipping feature a go a while ago, and since then, every time I go into a game and try to clip/record something, it records without capturing my mic unless i start a normal recording, enable my microphone and stop the recording (I have to do that every single time windows explorer gets focused, whether by alt tabbing, pressing Win+E by any other way)

I've been looking for an answer for quite some time now, and tried a bunch of things to get this problem solved, which includes:

Reinstalling Game Bar (by uninstalling it through Powershell and installing through msstore)

Reinstalling Windows

Using other Game Bar versions (including older ones, even the one included in the 2015 release of W10)

Using another computer

Trying it in a Virtual Machine (even KVMs)

Checking "Turn mic on by default when I record" in Windows Settings

Disabling/Enabling Game Mode

Manually setting "MicrophoneCaptureEnabled" to 1 in "HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\GameDVR"

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

sfc /scannow

Killing explorer.exe (sadly, UWP apps don't work without explorer for some reason)

Blindly listening to what ChatGPT has to say about this (ok i didn't really do this one)

Any ideas on how to deal with this?

Thanks in advance!!

:)

asazhardika

Hi Geri!
Thanks again for your kind reply, Hope you're having and amazing week!

Sadly, those articles have nothing to do with my problem, in the meantime i managed to get a workaround going.

Tab into the game, Press Win+Alt+R to start a recording, Win+Alt+M to unmute the mic and Win+Alt+R again to stop the recording, the thing is, I have to do that every time another window gets focused, which is kind of annoying.
The other workaround i found is setting the gamebar to record only the game's audio instead of the whole pc's, for some reason this fixes the issue, but isn't ideal as sometimes i want to clip something silly my friend said on discord without me being muted.

Best Regards,
Bernardo.

Hi piqseu

currently im facing the same issue, i tried a lot of things same as what you did on the first post (and same as you too, its not helping)
and i found this method is the one and only way to get it works (but need to repeat it everytime i change the windows)
please let me know if you have any update regarding to this issue to solve this bug

really appreciate

piqseu

Hi Geri!
Thanks again for your kind reply, Hope you're having and amazing week!

Sadly, those articles have nothing to do with my problem, in the meantime i managed to get a workaround going.

Tab into the game, Press Win+Alt+R to start a recording, Win+Alt+M to unmute the mic and Win+Alt+R again to stop the recording, the thing is, I have to do that every time another window gets focused, which is kind of annoying.
The other workaround i found is setting the gamebar to record only the game's audio instead of the whole pc's, for some reason this fixes the issue, but isn't ideal as sometimes i want to clip something silly my friend said on discord without me being muted.

Best Regards,
Bernardo.

Geri M.

Hi piqseu,

Welcome to Xbox Community Forums. We appreciate for sharing your concern with us and we hope that you are doing well today.

We understand that the Game Bar keeps muting the microphone whenever you use it on your PC. It seems that you have exhausted lots of basic troubleshooting steps but still the problem persists.

Can we try this article, Troubleshoot Xbox Game Bar on Windows | Xbox Support and go to the topic we have screened shots.

We hope it worked out well for you. If not, please reply back to this forum to let us know so we could find other options to resolve the problem.

We will be glad to follow up and help you.

Sincerely,

Xbox Forum Moderator

Microsoft Community

piqseu

Followup

Seems like manually revoking write permissions to every user (including SYSTEM) on the GameDVR key in the registry (HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\GameDVR) after setting "MicrophoneCaptureEnabled" to 1 fixes the issue, with the undesirable side effect of not being able to edit the gamebar's configuration until you re-enable the write perms

kinda of a hacky workaround, and there's times where the gamebar still insists on muting the mic by itself, but it happens way less often now

I'm in contact with microsoft support now to see if someone can help me fix it once and for all, i'll write another follow up soon

asazhardika

Hi, i found this issue is exist from 2019 and 700+ people have same question

why its not become a priority concern?

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...o/37616e5d-5179-4608-980d-18bc80bd2fe7?page=1

Game Bar keeps muting my mic whenever i alt tab