MissWhitters

Hi guys.

Last week I bought a new computer headset. It is an Altec Lansing headset (just one of those cheap ones that you get from WalMart). And everything was working great. But my computer also has an on-board microphone, so when plugged in (I have front headphone (x2) and microphone (x1) jacks), the headset overrode the on-board mouse. I was using sound recorder and the program audacity to make sure the headset worked and all. And it worked perfectly fine.

But today, I went to open Audacity, and my entire computer froze. I let it sit for a while until it became apparent that it wasn't going to unfreeze, so I had to hard-shut it down. But now I've discovered that ANYTHING that has to do with audio input freezes the computer.

- I can't open Audacity, sound recorder, or any other recording device.
- I can open the audio devices manager via right clicking on my volume icon, but if I select "recording devices" as what I want to open it freezes. If I select Volume or Sound, it opens fine, but as soon as I click the Recording tab, it comes up, I can see the mic is enabled, and there's another realtek thing that's disabled, but the computer automatically freezes.
- I can open the Realtek HD Audio Manager, but if I click the "Microphone" tab, the computer freezes.

I checked for updates on the audio-related drivers that I could find, but none of them had available updates at all. So I have absolutely no clue what to do.

I'm running a HP Pavilion laptop with Vista Ultimate (SP1 installed), and my audio is Realtek High Definition.