Hello, hope this is the right place to post this on. If not I'm sorry, kinda new to this

ok so i think there might be a problem with my external microphone, my internal works just fine but my dell laptop doesn't seem to recognize my external one all of a sudden. I tried 2 different mics and neither worked.

I was on skype on call with a friend last night, I was using my external microphone and it was working just fine (we were on call for about 2 hrs at this point), when all of a sudden she said that i kept breaking up and that she could hardly hear what I was saying. We ended the call and I tried the echo sound test service on skype and she was right, you couldn't tell what i was saying kept breaking up.I unplugged my mic and tried again but it didn't work.

I went to sound settings recording device and made sure my no devices were disabled, also clicked on their levels and made sure they were turned up. I played around with the stuff for a bit, it was fixed for the mean time... i called her again and it worked so we kept talking. The next day (today) I tried calling a different friend but again the whole breaking up problem occurred. I looked online to look for solutions, tried everything people suggested but nothing has worked, I made sure no microphones were disabled, i tried the device manager option, i tried to update my sound drives but they were up to date. Now my mic has changed from external to internal mic somehow.. before i couldnt see my internal mic under recording options even though under recording settings i made sure all disabled devices were shown. Only mic shown was my external, now I cant see my external just my internal, internal mic works just fine you can hear me but it sounds like there's a washing machine in the background.

http://prntscr.com/gtvx7

^screen shot of my recording devices, and yes i tried all 3 none are my external mic, in fact the 2 top ones are the same the internal mic.

I had to install a new hard drive recently since my last one died on me, and i had to reinstall windows 7, but before this all happened I had no problems with my mic, before i could see my external mic, my internal, and another option cant remember exactly.

btw both my mics are jack mics, hope you guys can help me or point me in the right direction