Inspiron 14R 5437 No apparent microphone installed

Does this jack only work with hybrid mics belonging to headsets that happen to have a 2-way sound in-out plug?

Hello. The headset jack (aka "combo" jack) on Dell laptops will work with the headphone part of any headset, but will work with the mic part of the headset only if the headset has a single plug that combines both the headphones and mic into one plug ( a combo plug). This type of plug is found on smart phone headsets. They have 4 segments (TRRS), which is different from a regular stereo plug, which has 3 segments (TRS).

in control panel under Dell Audio/Microphone.

Instead of looking at the Dell Audio software, go directly to the Windows sound properties and see if the mic is listed under the Recording tab. There is some variation depending on driver version, but most models with Realtek will look something like this, with "Microphone" and "Stereo Mix" being the only 2 items in the list.

You can right click on the white area under the device names and check "show disabled and disconnected" devices to make sure that everything possible will appear in the list.

There is only one listing for mic. When it is selected as the default device, then the mic array in the webcam is the mic, until you plug in an external mic, at which time that becomes the default mic (if Windows is able to recognize that a mic has been plugged in). So unplug the headset and see if you can get the mic array working. If you do not see Microphone at all in the list of Recording devices, then there might be a hardware issue.

The laptop was originally Windows 8.1 and was upgraded to Windows 10.

People seem to be having more audio issues after installing Win10. It handles audio differently than other operating systems and seems to be less audio-friendly.

all my audio related drivers are up to date.

You can test the audio driver by switching between the Realtek driver and the Windows native audio driver.

1. Open the Device Manager (find it in the Control Panel, or type device manager into the Windows search box).
2. Expand the "Sound, video & game controllers" and right click on "Realtek High Definition Audio".
3. Select to "Update Driver Software".
4. Click on "Browse my computer for driver software".
5. Click "Let me pick from a list of drivers on my computer".
6. Put a check in the box "Show compatible hardware" if not already checked.
7. In the list of devices, click "High Definition Audio" (the native driver).
8. Click "Next".
9. On the Update Driver Warning box, click "Yes" (install the driver).
10. Restart the laptop if prompted. If not prompted, sometimes you have to restart, sometimes not.
[To get back to the Realtek driver, do it again but reverse the names in steps 2 and 7.]

When testing, keep the headset unplugged and only attempt to use the mic array. The external mic jack probably will not work with the native driver.

If you only have the symptoms with one of the drivers, then the other is at fault. If you have the same symptoms with both audio drivers, then it is very probably not a driver issue.