Since I got Vista on one of my machines, I've tried to get my microphone to work.. With only transient successes.

I first tried the in-built audio VIA HD chip. It worked, but the level was extremely low with no mic boost available.

I then tried an Audigy but promptly returned it since the Creative beta drivers then available just didn't acknoweldge a microphone was there.

Then I had a Logitech USB Mike. That worked for a few days with a rather low sound level. Then it just issued garbled noises. Desinstalling, rebooting and reinstalling did not change the picture.

None of the computer stores I went to was willing to say if any sound card they had would provide a working mike with Vista. Some of them advised switching to XP.

Recently, I tried a Muse LT sound board since that was cheap (and i wasn't convinced a higher-priced board would work better) and claimed having vista drivers. After installing it (didn't work of course..), desinstalling, rebooting and using C-Media PCI drivers instead of muse, I finally got a working microphone... For a day.

At next reboot, I could still hear myself clearly thru the loudspeakers but the meters on recording devices just didn't budge and no app could get the sound.

After trying to desinstall and reinstall everything, the sound meter registered mic again, i could still hear myself fine but.. Every app gets strangely transformed sound. It is chopped, accelerated and higher pitched, like if snippets of sounds were replayed at a faster pace.

BTW, On-board audio is disabled in the bios. I tested every microphone on the nearby XP machine and they work perfectly there.

Does anybody have an idea of how to make that microphone work ? I know the simpler solution would be to simply ditch Vista and go XP.

Oops, double-posted.. I don't know how to remove the extra thread