Mic help for Gateway laptop SigmaTel audio

I have somehow lost the digital mic input option on my Gateway laptop model W3501.

The left scan is of my daughter's computer; the right scan is mine (the two computers are identical - I bought them at the same time):



Here's what happened: When I recorded on my computer with a plug-in mic, the onboard mic didn't mute, so I was getting recordings from both mics at once. I tried to disable the onboard mic.

But after doing that, I get a lot of white noise when I plug in a mic:

http://danhughes.net/pod/whitenoise.mp3

How can I get it back to how it was? (There are no restore points that go back as far as when I made the changes).

I really need step-by-step help here - I'm not all that computer savvy.

Thanks!

---Dan

try right clicking on the white space and check boxes " show disabled and show disconnected "

Zowie!

Thank you!

That brought the missing mic choice back, but unfortunately the white noise is as loud as ever. And on my daughter's machine, there is virtually no noise at all when the mic is plugged in.

So what might be going on???

do yo you have these?

No, I just have these:



Thanks,

---Dan