Dragon 8 problems

hi everyone I have a user having proplems with Dragon naturally Speaking 8

I've done all windows Updates and dragon upates and stil having problems

the issue is sometimes the mic works and other times it will not turn on. when it doesn't work in dragon it will also not work in windows...control panel > sounds > voice tab and test hardware.

and thne sound card will also not even play basic windows sounds.

sometimes it works after a reboot

other times u have to reinstall the drivers

today i noticed it was running on a low battery even thought it was
plugged in to the ac adaptor so I grabbed a different adapter and it started working.

I even formatted the machine last friday. and it worked then and broke this morning.

I'm at a loss unless it is flaky hardware and since it is a laptop I can't swap cards.

any ideas???