headset microphone problem - desktop vs laptop

[NewJeffCT]

I have a cheap headset with microphone that works fine on laptops - I've plugged into into the jack on 4 different laptops and I can hear just fine through the headset and speak clearly through the mike and people on the other end can hear me just fine. Some of these are newer laptops (less than a year old) running Windows 7 and one was 3+ years old laptop running Windows Vista.

However, I have a nice desktop at home as well (1 year old, running Windows 7, 8gb of Ram, Pentium i5, etc) , but I cannot for the life of me get the microphone to work at all. I can put the headset on and hear audio through the headset (youtube, skype, etc), but the mike doesn't work at all. I've tried plugging the headset jack into the PC directly (both the microphone jack spot and the headset jack spot) and also into the headset jack spot on the speakers themselves. If I plug the microphone jack into the PC directly, it will say, "you have plugged a device into the audio jack" or something like that.

I've tried disconnecting the speakers, reconnecting them, etc, etc.

Any ideas?

Thanks

[PoliticAverse]

1. Is the microphone muted in the mixer ?

Try: Start
Type: microphone
then select: Set up a Microphone

[NewJeffCT]

2. No, it is not

Good thought, though.

[PoliticAverse]

3. Try..

Try: Start
Type: microphone
then select: Set up a Microphone

[NewJeffCT]

4. weird

It seemed to work, but it's barely audible even with the sound cranked up to max.

Then, I tried to do it again, and it didn't work at all.