How to get microphone, webcam or speaker to work on older laptops with Windows 10 2004

Just thought I would share my experience about getting an older laptop and getting microphone, web cam or speakers to work with Windows 2004 Update.

I reinvigorated a Lenovo IdeaPad Z510, i5 with Windows 8 original installed and which was release in 2013, making it 7 yrs old. Try doing this with Android (Acer Iconia One 10 tablet lasted 1 year) or Mac OSes! (4yrs max). Good luck. All the software is still available at Lenovo Support Site.

The Z510 was speedily running Windows 10 1909 for awhile, then Update 2004 blew up the communications. Oh-oh dreaded driver issues?

In my situation in was the microphone. The webcam and speakers worked fine. This really stumped me since in the microphone and speakers use the same driver supplied by Realtek and it was installed and working. No driver issues reported, but the driver was 5 yrs. I reinstalled driver, to refresh it. No luck.

Then I remembered an old trick - turns out my default language was originally Canadian French,  then Canadian English, not US English.

Change all setting here to English, United States for Date & Time, Region, Language and Speech.

So I proceeded to change all setting to default U.S. English, see above image.

And voila, Cortana would work (did not complain that it was not supported in English (Canada) setting?) and microphone magically began to work. 

So when all else fails factory reset all setting to default US English. 

Hope this helps someone out. It's not an obvious solution.