Blue Snowball USB Microphone doesn't work after upgrading to Win10

Hello, I have a Blue Snowball USB microphone that worked fine in Windows 7 (entirely Plug-n-play, no drivers needed), that no longer functions in Windows 10. I'm at work right now, but I will update the post with specifics once I'm home. The following is what I know about the problem:

Upon plugging in the microphone, the red light comes on the body of the mic as it does when it is receiving power and ready to record. I hear the notification of a device being plugged in, and then nothing else happens. When I check device manager, "Blue Snowball Microphone" shows up in unknown devices, but windows doesn't know what driver to apply to it I suppose. 

I went to the event viewer to see what was happening when I plugged it in, and it apparently invokes pnpui (I believe, this is based off my memory, I will update if I'm wrong) and then does nothing else. 

I was curious and plugged in an old usb webcam in order to get some sort of mic working, but the webcam's microphone didn't work, only the camera part. So I could see myself, but the audio part never left the unidentifiable hell in device manager. 

I have tried updating the system and all the drivers that I'm aware of, but to no avail. Any thoughts or suggestions on how to move forward? Let me know if you need any more information.

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Answer
Answer

Motherboard, USB Headset and the Mic in my video cam.

All three managers were fighting for the same resource (microphone)


After 10 days of searching for a solution this finally got me pretty close to my problem (which is now resolved). We all share the same issue with different error messages, hopefully my solution is helpful. I had a laptop and desktop with the same issue which have both been resolved. Laptop was upgraded from Windows 8.2 and the Desktop from Windows 7, both to Windows 10. My Blue BabyBottle stopped working on my desktop but worked on my laptop. My Blue USB SnowBall (Plug-N-Play) stopped working on both the Laptop/Desktop.

Here's what I tried and what I did to fix the issue:
As the quote states from Johnny Gringo, I too had multiple recording devices. I tried disabling all recording devices in Device Manager, rebooted my system, and still was not able to find the mic at all. Not even under unidentifiable. After re-enabling all my devices in Device Manager, I right-clicked on the speaker in the Task Manager (Bottom Right by the clock) and opened Recording Devices. While the Blue Snowball was disconnected, I disabled all the devices in Recording Devices (For me it was "Stereo Mix", "External Mic at left side", and "Microphone" on my Laptop; "Stereo Mix", "External Mic", "Camera Microphone", and "Blue BabyBottle" on my Desktop). I then restarted my PC's and while all recording devices were still disabled, I connected the Blue Snowball Microphone and BINGO! It showed up under Recording Devices, NEVER NEEDED TO INSTALL ANYTHING. I hope this will help some of you with this problem. This frustrated me for some time now but now I can resume all of my projects. Thanks to Johnny Gringo for pointing me in the right direction!

**NOTE: I will say that after attempting to switch mics and disabling the Snowball, same issue came back, but following what I did above, still brings the mic back without the need to reboot. Just disable all devices without the snowball connected, plug and play. 

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Question Info

Last updated March 27, 2021 Views 66,316 Applies to: