Microphone plays back only static

My daughter's laptop HP Pavilion is having a microphone issue. She told me that when she skypes the person on the other end only hears loud static noise. I tried recording something on her laptop and sure enough it played back in loud screachy static. I called the tech support line and they had me uninstall the driver and then it reinstalled. they also had me reduce the start-ups on her computer so now the processes are 57. still same problem. We plugged in a external speaker.... same thing. He told me that we will have to wipe out everything out and do a total restore. Does this sound right? is there any other options or suggestions? As everyone knows, doing a total restore is a major pain. Backing everything up and reloading all your programs... Does anyone have any other thoughts before we have to try this? and I say "try" as they don't know if that will resolve the problem or not. Thanks!