How to troubleshoot microphone or audio recording not working in Windows 7?

I have the following problem on Windows 7.

The built-in microphone of my laptop does not seem to be working. Either that (i.e. the mic hardware is not working), or it may be a software problem, i.e. the mic may be working hardware-wise, but the audio drivers or other software components in Windows, that are responsible for working along with the mic to do audio recording, are not working. Due to this, I have the following problems:

• when on a Skype audio (or audio+video) call, when I talk, the other party is not able to hear me at all. Not even at low volume. But I am able to hear them just fine. Even video works fine both ways in Skype.

• unable to record audio on my machine, using any tool like Windows Voice Recorder or even YouTube My Webcam. But audio playback of music or other audio or video files is fine, e.g. using VLC Player. Normal beeps and other sounds for Windows / DOS error messages or waings, also work okay.

( This current problem is similar to the earlier one that I posted (link below), except that now, audio recording is not working in Windows Sound Recorder / YouTube / Skype (and yet to be tested in Google Hangouts), whereas in the question linked below, it was working in Skype but not in Google Hangouts:

Why is mic audio not working one-way in Google Hangouts on Windows 7 and Chrome )

This time around, I have not yet tested to see if this problem also exists using an exteal headset plugged into the laptop, because I do not have a headset right now. I will try to get a headset in a day or two, try that out for recording, and then report the results in Idea to this question.

I have also not yet tested this time with Google Hangouts instead of Skype. Will try that in a few hours or by tomorrow (when some contact is available to try it with), and add another comment about the results of that.

Thanks for any suggestions on solving or troubleshooting this.

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