App doesn't “see” the microphone after Windows 10 upgrade

Question

2 days ago my Windows 10 had a complete auto upgrade & the result of that is that a WPF application that I wrote, stopped "seeing" my microphones (I tested 3 different ones). Windows itself is seeing them perfectly fine. But the app doesn't seem to activate them (the green led light doesn't turn on like it used to) upon launch. Any ideas where I could start looking to fix this? I already re downloaded the microphone's drivers and did a fresh install. I guess its not a code issue since I haven't touched the code at all, but below I show the part where I use to start the Speech Recognition. Thank you.

       private void StartRecognition()
    {
        LoadGrammars();

            recognizer.SpeechDetected += new EventHandler<SpeechDetectedEventArgs>(recognizer_SpeechDetected);
            recognizer.SpeechRecognitionRejected += new EventHandler<SpeechRecognitionRejectedEventArgs>(recognizer_SpeechRecognitionRejected);
            recognizer.SpeechRecognized += new EventHandler<SpeechRecognizedEventArgs>(recognizer_SpeechRecognized);
            recognizer.RecognizeCompleted += new EventHandler<RecognizeCompletedEventArgs>(recognizer_RecognizeCompleted);

            speechRecognitionThread = new System.Threading.Thread(delegate ()
            {
                try
                {
                    recognizer.SetInputToDefaultAudioDevice();
                    recognizer.RecognizeAsync(RecognizeMode.Multiple);

                }
                catch { }

            });
            speechRecognitionThread.Start();
    }

Answer 1

I found the problem. Even though your microphone might appear and work correctly in Windows Sound settings, you still need to set it up further so that all apps can see it and not just Windows. Here is how you do that:

1. Go to your control panel and click on "speech recognition".

2. Now click on Advanced speech recognition.

3. On the bottom of the window that opened, click the middle button, labeled "Advanced".
4. Make sure the 2nd checkbox is checked and choose the microphone you want to set as your default in the drop down menu.
5. Press ok and you should be all set up.

Hope this heps others!