WetGeek By the way, there's a white LED that's lit on the F4 key of these Latitudes. I know that at one time it was turned off on mine, but I have no idea what I did to achieve that. Now that I've rebuilt this machine, it's on again, and I find it distracting. Any idea what it means, and how I might turn it off?
Yeah. I noticed this, too, in the last few days. Dell's support docs suggests that the F4 key stays lit when the microphone is disabled by the system:
"On some Latitude systems the F4 key is used to mute the built in microphone. However if the Microphone is disabled in the BIOS the light will remain on after the system has booted into the Windows operating system. This is working as designed and the light remains on as an indication that it has been disabled in the system BIOS. To restore the functionality of the F4 key, re-enable the microphone in the BIOS."
In my case, the F4 key lights up when I plug the laptop into an external docking station using the USB-C port. When plugged into the dock, the "volume" thingy on the taskbar does not show microphone volume. When the laptop is not plugged into the docking station, the F4 key light goes away and I can adjust microphone volume using the taskbar thingy. So, in my case, it seems to have to do with docking (external keyboard and HDMI monitor) turning off the microphone somehow. Odd.
If you are not using a dock, you might check your BIOS to make sure that the microphone is enabled. If you are using a docking station, welcome to the club.
I'll look into it and share what I find.