Thanks for the Speccy url 
I will break down your reply to point out some potential pitfalls and possible causes of the mic issue;
I tried it in Safe Mode and it didn't work there either
This makes a driver issue less likely.
I also have no idea when it could have started and I delete all my restore points by habit
A software update may have been the cause** of this and by not having any restore points you have ruled out the possibility of reversing the process, you should not delete all restore points as they are invaluable in instances such as this, use a tool such as System Restore Manager which is free and which will allow you to control the number of restore points and amount of space they take up on the HDD etc, details here, please disregard any other product or service that may be offered at the link.
I have used Geek Buddy from Comodo and they used remote access to my computer and they said it was fixable but they wanted to charge me but one of the techs said that 'my drive is corrupted'. I checked my hard drive and it's healthy so I don't know if that helps.
Not sure what they were seeing but with the exception of the amount of free storage space on the D: drive/partition getting a bit low (not critical btw) the HDD looks good.
I have reinstalled the audio drivers already a couple different ways too.
You have two soundcards installed, one Nvidea and one IDT which may explain why you have sound, if you tell us the exact model name or number of the notebook we will look for the correct drivers for you, the Quanta MB is an OEM product that HP have used and the audio drivers that they use are typically for IDT and not Nvidea.
**ToolwizCareFree
Please uninstall this as it is at best a gimmick that has the potential to render your computer inoperable, these so called system optimizer programs are offered to people free but the sad fact is that when the so called free software has damaged a computer the resultant fix offered by the software provider will come at a cost, read the blog by respected author miekiemoe here this software may have made changes to the registry among other things.
You are welcome btw
