Front Mic Not Being Picked Up

Alright, so I've had this problem ever since I upgraded to Windows 8.

I was initially a Windows Vista user, and this headset worked perfectly fine on the Vista Home Premium OS. However, ever since my upgrade to Windows 8 Pro the microphone refuses to pick up sound.

I have done everything from uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers, Realtek specifically to plugging it in through the back of my tower. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that it is not a hardware problem, as I use this same headset with my Xbox 360.

I've gone in and changed the settings via the sound menu, I have done literally everything I can find thus far. The microphone is detected, however there is constantly one bar of sound pick up from the microphone. My voice isn't even picked up from the Microphone set up menu. I've unmuted the front mic through the sound menu as well, but I still get nothing. I've reset everything to default countless times, and I still get no results.

The headset I am using specifically is the Red Samurai Xbox 360 Stereo Headset. I just can't figure out what is wrong.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

First thing, are you using the Dell supplied sound driver? If not, that is the first thing - install the Dell sound driver. I did support on the Dell forums for many years and we found in most cases non-Dell sound drivers either do not work or do not work correctly.

Here is the Dell driver for Vista, which will work on Win 8, as Dell does not officially support drivers above Vista on this model. Driver Details | Dell US

You should also set the Stereo Mix as the default recording device, then any mic or line in or streaming audio will be recorded. This won't fix the low mic level but is the "normal" recording device setting.