mic is good but doesn't work in any application

[emcol]

have tried new soundcard, new mic, have reformatted and loaded both win98 1st and 2nd editions. Output sound works fine but both mic and line-in does not
although line-in from an exterior source will play thru
speakers but not record. Have tried all applications
including sound recorder in windows, webcam mail,
musicmatch etc etc. Could it be the motherboard as
Windows shows no conflicts?

[EduardoG]

Double click the speaker in the system tray (bottom right of your screen), click Options then Properties and click the radio button labelled "Recording", make sure you've got Line In and Mic checked in the list that appears and then click ok, now you see a load of volume controls, check "Select" under the device you want to record from

[Sensei]

Some microphones require a "biasing"- basically, they need a small voltage source to operate properly. I had a soundcard that wouldn't work with my mic. I built a small circuit to bias it and it worked great after that. I later bought another soundcard and no longer needed my little circuit. It doesn't sound like you have a bad mic or bad soundcard, just an incompatible combination. Some mics require batteries- those are the ones that are biased and would probably fix your problem. Or, if you're the adventurous type, and if you can find or make a cable, hook a cd player or something similar (only from the earphone output or RCA output from the cd player or whatever, NOT the speaker outputs!) If you get sound after that, then you need a biased mic.