Windows 7: Microphone Issue

Ok... so lemme give you some background before i go into my problem. I have a hp pavillion dv9500t CTO notebook, that came originally with windows vista and realtek onboard hd audio. Recently, my hard drive fried so i had to replace it with a new one. I reinstalled 7 instead of vista on the new hard drive.

A few days ago i tried my internal mic, and it wasn't working... i decided to buy a new headset, that i did. Turns out this is not working either. I am almost 99% sure this is a sound card problem and i have no idea how to fix it. I have tried every which way to fool around with the sound settings, disable / enable the driver... old drivers, etc. It is definetly detecting both my internal and external mic separately but its not taking any sound from them.

Now i know many people have been having this same issue with 7 and microphones, but i have yet to come across a solution that works. Someone please help .

EDIT: Did some more testing... and for some reason... the microphone output right now is my speaker output ( what i hear )... Dunno how to fix this @.@.

2ND EDIT: Ok so i have no ****ing clue what i did... but i went all emo and starting doing retarded ****... uninstalled my driver let microsoft install theirs... then tried to install hp's one on top of it which errored out... and then i tried to install the latest realtek which also errored out and then i uninstalled microsofts and restarted... and now its magically working... god 7 is such a *****.

Glad to here it's working. Only wish you could explain how, this would have helped out others I'm sure. Anyways Welcome to seven forums liezryou. Enjoy the site lots of great tutorials and information.