I will try to keep this short.
 
I have a EVGA Z270 Classified K motherboard (win 10 x64) for about a year now. Everything has been working mostly fine. Last month my children broke the mic off my headset. No big deal as I was not using it then. I just recently started playing Fortnite and I wanted to use the in game voice chat. Grabbed my wife's USB headset to use. Could not get any voice chat out of the set or the mic. I could hear the game sounds fine. I checked and rechecked all the in game setting many times. I checked the sound settings and disabled everything not in use. Keep trying to set up the microphone in the control panel and it says it is connected but it shows no input when talking.
 
I looked up the problem and found others had an issue also in the game, but it worked fine on other games. I fired up some other games and as expected it did not work. When I tired to use Windows microphone setup I get an error about the software or device not working correctly. I loaded the software for the USB headset from the manufacture and it changed nothing.
 
I removed the USB headset and just plugged some standard headphones in and after redoing the settings I was able to hear the voice chat in game which I was never able to do before. I ordered a new 3.5 plug headset figuring that should work as some USB headsets have issues on USB3.0 ports.
 
So the new headset has arrived and I plug it in, same problem. Windows is still not seeing any input even though it says it is plugged in and I still get the same error message when attempting to set up a mic. Now I no longer hear any voice chat but the game sounds are still there. The headset came with a USB dongle so I loaded the software and tried that, still nothing.
 
I test both headsets on other computers and the work fine. At this point I am thinking something has happened to the onboard Sound Blaster Recon 3Di audio. I pull out a Sound Blaster Z card out of one of my other computers to try that. I disable the 3Di and load the driver for the Z. Plug it all up, and still does not work.
 
During the time after the kids broke my headset until now I was forced to do a very large Windows update. I have no idea if this update is what has broken my sound. I am at a loss at this point to what is going on. I have been into every sound setting in Windows and the Sound Blaster software. I am pretty sure my BIOS is up to date but I have not checked. But the latest notes do not say anything about audio.
 
 
Anyone have any idea that I might be overlooking? And yes, the mic is not turned off on the headset. Windows is failing to see any input from any mic even though it says it is plugged in.
 
Thanks

You could also try a restore point in Windows or do a clean install of Windows on another drive to eliminate any potential software problems that may be rendering the input sound unusable. 

bassntruck
Quad:
I have checked the setting everywhere. It says the microphone is connected and not muted but shows nothing on the visual graph when speaking or any noise is present. I have tested the new 3.5mm headset on other computers and it works fine. The only slightly strange thing that I have noticed is the windows calls it the front input and SB calls it the rear input. If I change the SB setting to front input the microphone in windows then disappears and say none are connected. I have found no way to get those to match, but I am not sure if they ever did to be honest.
 
JoseR:
I have yet to try a restore point. A clean install is a bit of a silly attempted solution at this point. Nothing was changed besides a large update from Windows.
 
 
Thanks

that update could have borked the drivers, i usually uninstall certain hardware drivers before each windows feature update, being that your was off so long I'm leaning to a windows update issue unfortunately 

Quite probably, the Windows Update broke something.  Lately, I've found a lot of strange issues happen after some of these larger or Creator's updates; everything from touchpads stop working on laptops, to audio devices not working, other peripherals stop working, and sometimes you may need to completely reinstall all drivers for items to show up again.
 
So, let's break the problem down into two components:
 
1.  USB Audio issues, and
2.  3.5mm Audio issues.
 
With USB Audio, the Creative audio controller will have no impact, because windows will use a standard audio driver based off the USB ports.  As a result, if you're having issues with USB, it's probably unrelated to issues with 3.5mm ports.
 
On the flip side, 3.5mm Audio issues won't affect USB audio.  If you can, please take a screenshot of the Windows Sound "Recording" menu.  Also, is the mic connected to the front panel audio, or the rear panel audio connectors?  If connected to the rear, is the mic connected to the pink port?
 
As David noted above, the NVIDIA HD Audio could cause a problem, and can be tested to see if it fixes the issue.  However, I think if we're going down that road, that may be a sure sign the OS is slightly borked from the update.

Thank You.
 
This is exactly what happened. I knew since the 3.5 and USB had no input it had to be something simple. I am glad I did not reload Windows like what was suggested earlier. 
 

jonkrmr
I had the same problem and finally figured it out.
 
Windows update turned off my mic under Privacy settings in Windows.
 
Check under Windows Settings - Privacy - Microphone and make sure the master switch for "Allow apps to access your microphone" is set to On.
You can still turn everything off under "Choose which apps can access your microphone".
 
For some reason, the last major Windows update turned this off by default.
 
Could not find anything about this issue on the internet or forums anywhere and just happened to stumble across it in my last ditch effort to figure out what happened before I resorted to doing a complete clean install of everything again.

EVGATech_LeeM
Quite probably, the Windows Update broke something.  Lately, I've found a lot of strange issues happen after some of these larger or Creator's updates; everything from touchpads stop working on laptops, to audio devices not working, other peripherals stop working, and sometimes you may need to completely reinstall all drivers for items to show up again.
 
So, let's break the problem down into two components:
 
1.  USB Audio issues, and
2.  3.5mm Audio issues.
 
With USB Audio, the Creative audio controller will have no impact, because windows will use a standard audio driver based off the USB ports.  As a result, if you're having issues with USB, it's probably unrelated to issues with 3.5mm ports.
 
On the flip side, 3.5mm Audio issues won't affect USB audio.  If you can, please take a screenshot of the Windows Sound "Recording" menu.  Also, is the mic connected to the front panel audio, or the rear panel audio connectors?  If connected to the rear, is the mic connected to the pink port?
 
As David noted above, the NVIDIA HD Audio could cause a problem, and can be tested to see if it fixes the issue.  However, I think if we're going down that road, that may be a sure sign the OS is slightly borked from the update.

A recommendation for a BR was made by a fellow forum member. Thanks for helping out and finding a solution.

the_Scarlet_one
How did you post a thread with no title? I think you were replying to a different thread, because your post seems like it should be a reply.

By any chance, could you find that post and provide a link to the mods to get this where it belongs? I think it was to a Z270 mic issue thread.

Fixed.