Windows 7 Mic cutting out to static after installation

[Anemoi]

I recently installed Windows 7 onto a secound, empty hard drive, at the time of installation and untill after the first few handfuls of boots (I unattached the sata drive with my other OS, Vista, internally before hand). Direcetly after installing Win7 I experianced problems with "Skype" where my mic would, apparently cut out to nothing but a tornado like static after a minute or two on the line. At first I thought this was a problem with the OS and tried to boot back into vista and use Skype, to no avail; I experianced the same difficulties. I then began to believe it to be a problem with the skype program untill I tried the mic on other programs such as Aim and Msn messenger where I experianced the exact same problems. I now strongly believe the problem to have occured during the Windows 7 installation where, I suspect, the installation altered some sort of settings with my sound card, as I have found information with simular problems all having the sound card being the source of the problem. I don't think it is coincidence that this happened in unison with my installing of another OS and would like to think that I have checked my system throughly enough to have properly pinpointed the culprit, but I'm left without a proper solution to right this problem.

What I would like to know is if there is a way to reset whatever may have been altered AND, on the off chance that this is all a verry inconvient coincedient, whether or not, for certain, Windows 7 being installtion was, completely, unable to change something relating to my sound card on the level that booting a completely different os on a completely seperate hard disk would encounter a problem.

Thank you.