my microphone wont work

i've only been on comps for 4 months so i guess i'm a teckno nered/nard or something.. anyway my ext mic stoped working on im ,the tuning wizard cant help'also tried a different site, same result ,tried a new mic ,, speakers are ok
thanks in advance for any help john oh yeah win 98 se

 

Go to the sound control in the bottom corner and double click on that. Then click on File-->Advanced and select the boxes to show all the sound options. Then make sure that Line In, and microphone are at the highest, then try it.

 

thanks for the quick reply .. ckick on what at bottom? only have volume control icon in toolbar, went into my comp,had a look at multimedia no help there ,..

 

yeah double click on the volume control icon, that is what i meant sry.

 

done all you said , the green (in im tools tuning wizard) shows about 5mm of green ,not responding with my voice though, tried a new mic too... anything else i can do ,, i did try to download msn again, it said there were some errors and it fixed them