How do I hook-up a microphone to my computer?

I'm trying to hook-up a microphone to my computer but I can't find out how to access it on the computer. I've plugged it into the back of the system but I can't figure out where on the computer I'm supposed to access it. I've gone into control panel/audio devices, but it doesn't have a section on using a microphone.
Someone please help me!

I have a Pentium 4. It's a Dell computer. It has an XP home operating system installed on it.

Thanks in advance.

 

It is plugged into the pink port and I got it to work when I did a test. There was a bar that said test and I tested it. It requested internet access to do the test so I allowed it. I don't know if that makes a difference or not but it worked in the test.

I can't find anywhere else that it works though. I have Cool Edit Pro 2.0 but I can't get the microphone to work. I want to use the mike for recording guitar tracks and stuff.

I went into the control panel in a section called Sounds and Audio Devices and there is no tab, bar or mention of me using my soundcard with the mike. There is a section called audio and in that section there is a bar that says Sound Recording and there is a picture of a microphone but I can't change the defult setting. The default setting is this: SB Live! Wave Device.

I've tried a whole bunch of things like going into the device manager and the speech section but I can't find out how to get the thing working.

Help!

 

Did you try it with the Windows SOUND RECORDER, to see if you could record your voice?
Start>Programs>Accessories>Entertainment>SoundRecorder.

 

I don't have the Sound Recorder option.

 

Hummmmmmmm. Colonel, try going to add/remove programs.Select Windows Components, and try installing any audio associated stuff thats in there. There's like sound recorder, Audio Compression, and stuff like that. Maybe you just don't have enough audio associated stuff installed for the mike to do anything.

 

I don't have those options either.

 

In the Add/Remove, Windows Components, Accessories I mean.

 

ach... have you "selected" it in sound and audio?
double click your volume, properties, recording, click okay, make sure that Microphone is "selected" and see what the level is at.

Try cool edit then

 

OK, problem solved. Well, sort of.

I've looked at everything about audio on my computer and finally I clicked on the right thing, but what I got was an error message. That's why I couldn't use the microphone. The error message said that something was not installed on my computer and that I should use Add/Remove to add what was missing. I did that but there was nothing to add to the audio to allow me to use the microphone! I inserted the Drivers and Utilities disk that came with my computer to re-install the audio driver, but it said that I shouldn't because everything was fine. I did learn that I had an audio player I never heard of before on my computer when reading about my sound card. It turns out that the audio player had a recorder in it that supported a microphone! I tried it and it worked!

I still get the error message when I go into Control Panel, Sound and Audio but I can use the microphone in the Creative Play Center 2 player that I just found.

I just think that's weird

Thanks for your help everybody, I was getting really frustrated with my computer.