I THINK this is my sound driver's fault.

OK, so my mic wasn't working on Ventrilo the other day, so I start messing with all my sound settings and so on and so forth and finally realize that the sound interface program that came with my (integrated) soundcard thinks that my microphone (the device plugged into the mic port) is not a microphone, and is therefore, not listening to said microphone. So, I unplug and replug the mic a few times, until the program gets a lucky guess and decides that, perhaps, this is indeed a microphone. Then it works. Only one problem: now, whenever my computer is running, the mic is ALWAYS active. As in, when I have the headphone/mic thing on, I can hear myself breathing into the mic over the speakers (I use speakers and the mic, not the headphones that the mic is attached to.) So finally, the question is how do I get that to stop? It's never done this before. And when I talk on Ventrilo, people complain that my mic is echoing, probably because they hear my speakers repeating me in the background...

Please help a n00b correct what is probably a simple mistake. I only want the mic to be active when I'm in Ventrilo, holding down the scroll wheel (my mic "hotkey"). People can't hear me when I don't have that pressed down, but I can still hear me over the speakers. It's really quite annoying. Proceed with the suggestions.

 

Teh Bump.

 

Bump much?

 

have you tried going into control panel? go to sounds and audio, voice, theres a volume control there.