Mic doesnt work

Ok so ive been reading a lot and found that there is a large issue with mics not working properly in windows 7.

here is my dilemma
Imma make this quick:

Came home to talk to buddy on skype. when i plugged in my mic and tried to call him, skype said there was a problem with my mic. under RealtekHD audio (onboard controller for Gigabyte p55 Ud2 board) the mic is recognized and i can hear my self talk if i turn on playback. http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/7650/micproblem.jpg
under the windows sound setup i tried to configure the mic but it wouldnt work. i get a popup saying "Make sure your audio hardware is working properly and check your audio configuration in the audio devices and sound themes control panel" http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/8367/micproblem2.jpg

so i decided to reinstall the audio drivers from the gigabyte disk. well after rebooting, i had no sound through the speakers and no sound through the mic still. windows tells me i have no speakers plugged in and i cant even begin to change volume levels anywhere. i re-flashed my bios of the board from f7 to f10 but that didnt change anything

please help, this is starting to piss me off (more so cause it slate and i just wanted to game after work)

Update:
i did a system restore and my speakers work again, but the mic still does not work. i can only hear it if i listend to the mic playback in realtek audio hd manager. if i try to calibrate it, the mic doesnt work

Update 2:
after doing some reading on other forums ive found two similar cases:
People have windows 7 with 4 gigs of ram. everything is fine, and mic works (on desktops btw). then (like me) they did a fresh install of windows 7 onto a new hdd/ssd and added 4 gigs of ram to make the total 8 gigs. now the only thing that has changed is the amount of ram in the system. would this cause the mic to stop working, cause to me that doesn't make sense, but if two other people have had the same problem...

Hi corban

Could you post a snip of your recording devices?
Right click your volume icon in system tray>Select Recording devices>Sniping Tool>Attach and Upload

Regards

Set your Mic as the default device...

Ap

Ok i checked an i dont see the sniping tool anywhere. when i click recording devices the only options are configure, set default and properties.

if i try to select the mic as default, nothing happens. the only way this works is if i disable the entire webcam. also my web cam does not work as i just checked right now, however it worked about 3 weeks ago

Sniping Tool is available under Accessories.
Go to Start Orb>All Programs>Accessories

http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/276...ingdevices.jpg

the "desktop mic" is on the web cam and the one below that is my zalman clip-on mic

Hi Corban

Right click Microphone>Set as default Device

Post back on your results

Regards

ok i wanna close out this thread starting from the beginning for finality. . here it goes

I'm currently having a lot of difficulties with my computer and sound. the issue started 2 days ago when i was going to play a game with my friend and we tried to connect on skype to talk. when i plugged my mic in, it did not work. the only way i could get sound out of my mic was if i turned up this setting. if i did that i could hear my self through the computer, but no matter what else i did, the mic didn't work. when i would try to configure the mic i would only get this error.

Everything i tried did not fix the issue. this includes:

1. Attempt: uninstall and reinstall the sound drivers with the cd that came with the mobo
Result: The mic still didnt work but now there was no sound coming out of my speakers.

2. Attempt: I Re-Flashed my bios from f7 to f10 and then uninstalled/reinstalled the drivers.
Result: no change

3. Attempt: i Did a system restore to the earliest i could go (which was 3 days ago)
Result: the sound in the speakers came back, but the issue with the mic was still present

Having sound back on my computer i then tried searching the web and different forums. i did come across, on two different occations, people who had similar issues. let me explain. About 3 months ago i got an SSD and 4 more gigs of ram. what i did was installed the 4 extra gigs of ram and then i did a fresh install of windows 7 on the SSD. I hadnt tried the mic untill three days ago since i did the reinstall. The other two people had the same issue after reinstalling the OS onto a new HDD and installing 4 more gigs of ram: no sound/mic. one of those people reported he had to do a fresh install of win 7 without the extra 4 gigs of ram for the mic to start working again.

After finding this i tried these next steps:

1. Attempt: I played around with the mics on the settings under recording devices when you right click on the windows volume icon in the tray. Snip of tray. i tried to make hte zalman mic my default mic, but nothing happened. the only way to make it the default mic was to disable the entire web cam function. i was not able to only disable the mic.
Result: failure

2. Attempt: i tried removing the extra 4 gigs of ram i installed
Result: no change in problem

3. Attempt: I bought a sound card at frys (creative x-fi extreemgamer becuase it was on sale for 79 with 40 dollar rebate instead of 99. sale goes till the 8th) and installed it in the system so the motherboard wouldn't have to deal with the sound.
Result: Still no sound. because i had to uninstall the old drivers and install the new creative drivers, my speakers as well as the mic now do not work (yes i got the most recent drivers and did not use the disk that came with the card). the only time i get sound from my speakers is when i test the virtual speaker function offered by creative shown here.

After all these test i am lead to believe that this is solely a windows 7 problem. The last things i tried were

1. Attempt: Delete windows updates to see if this solves the problem.
Result: Fail. infact after doing this, trouble shooter stoped working lol

2. Attempt: do a system restore back, however because of all the driver installs i recently did, i am only able to go back to july 3rd.
Result: Fail... cause after i did the restore i still had to uninstall the drivers which took away my sound.

3. Attempt: Use windows 7 disk to preform a "repair" (select upgrade install).
Result: win

Hi corban

Thanks for letting us know. :)

Regards