Windows 7 - HD audio deck recording mic and stereo out

Back in the day, most mics sounded awful and your only alternative was usb mics. However, newer motherboards seem to have better onboard mic (less noise) and any old headset will do.

the motherboard I have is an asus P5KPL-CM it's onboard audio is:
VIA VT1708B 8 -Channel High-Definition Audio CODEC

and its chipset:

Intel G31
Intel ICH7

In windows xp, audio capture was fine. I primarily use the mic with online gaming and was really happy with how well the onboard sound recorded. Very clean, little noise. In game people said my mic sounded great and tests showed that.

Went to windows 7 recently, everything is great except the mic recording is also capturing what audio output is going on (ie. the game's sound as well)

I played with the nixer settings to death and can't seem to prevent this from happening. All games do it, windows sound recorder, audacity etc.

I noticed there is a stereo mix tab and it has it's own recording volume which I have as muted and its recording level down to zero.

This is with the front mic port but I've tried the back and same thing. This isn't an expensive headset, but again it worked great in xp. If the cables were gone it would be scratchy, not pick up the audio output. But I have a backup of this headset and tried it but the same thing.

I don't have the speakers plugged in, but thought maybe the headset was 'bleeding' somehow and the mic was picking it up, but with just the mic plugged in alone it still records the audio output of whatever is playing, so it's not somehow picking up what's coming out of the headset itself.

Sorry my post is long, I just wanted to try and eliminate the typical suggestions. I'm on the latest drivers from their site (there are only two versions for windows 7). I've done a reinstall of their drivers but no good.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Rather than muting the stereo mix device you could try disabling it in recording devices - only thing I can think of as it looks like a driver problem.

Thanks for the suggestion. I looked in there before but tried again and found the stereo mix and disabled it. I was kind of surprised upon disabling it, it was removed from the windows 7 manage recording devices option. And in turn, it's now gone from the HD audio deck mixer. But it didn't solve the problem.

Yes, it's probably some driver bug. I know usb mics are technically better sound recording wise but as I mentioned onboard audio is usually good enough (for gaming anyway) and a lot of usb headsets use cpu resources. From what I read you have to hunt for ones that an onbaord dsp to not tax the cpu.

During voip, I guess who cares but I've read mixed things about them when something else is taxing the cpu like gaming.

And I haven't actually bought a soundcard in years. In this day and age of onbaord soundcards, I suspect only people more serious about audio get a dedicated soundcard.

It's just annoying to either go back to xp or throw some money at the problem.

But I'm stubborn and will try a little more but I don't see what I can do at this point.