ah that icon thing was throwin me off. sounded like he was saying a mic icon poped up when he plugged it in. i was like, wtf, never seen a computer dectect when a mic was plugged in, its a headphone plug. lol.
i'll just let ace help ya with this one

i dont use mics often, and everytime i've seen a problem with em its always been something simple that the person just over looked, like volume settings or motherboard sound was set to surround sounds so the mic port was being used as the back speaker plug or something.