Vista - The Mic unmute thing, again

Greetings, I am a newcomer who has been reading about the no mic to speakers/headphones problem that folks who record music like myself were accustomed to having in XP. I am using an HP dv6500 with a Realtek ALC268, have updated drivers, been trying reg edits. I have not found this problem solved anywhere on the web. All I want to do is hear my bass in the headphones as I play along with a guitar track. There are no Mic/Line in settings outside of record settings (nothing in playback) which only set the level coming in. Is there really no way to monitor the mic input (in real time) since no one has seemed to solve this yet? I would love it if someone would address this directly. Thanks in advance.

I have just chatted with Microsoft support and was told simply that it is not possible to do this. Anyone know of third party products that might do this without Latency? XP here I come