Solved! Holding down Alt key causes microphone volume to greatly decrease

[dmd0705]

When I hold down the alt key while talking to someone on Skype, the volume drops so they can barely hear me. As soon as the alt key is released, the sound is fine.

 

[hang-the-9]

Sounds like that key may be set to mute or volume drop in the program or some hotkey setup.

 

[dmd0705]

Sounds like that key may be set to mute or volume drop in the program or some hotkey setup.

It's only Skype, and I turned off global hotkeys and it's still doing that. I don't know where to find out why the Alt key alone is causing the huge volume decrease. The Alt key usually requires another key to be a hotkey, but this is when only the Alt key is held down. As soon as the Alt key is released, the volume increases to normal. Any ideas?

 

[dmd0705]

This is the fix:
Open Control Panel, select Sound.
Go to Recording tab and double click your microphone.
Under Advanced tab uncheck Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device. Click Apply and OK to save changes.

Very simple, yet it took me weeks of Google searches to find it.