Microphone delay when recording in Windows 7

I've tried the solution that tricky2K andYessicalVillarosa supplied, and I'm still not able to monitor my recording.  I have a Realtek audio card, and I have the playback bar all the way up, and nothing.  Does anyone know of a way to fix this?  It's really getting frustrating.  The recording is also worse - sounds like it's under water and cuts in and out.  I'm starting to think I got a lemon.  I got a Toshiba Satellite E205, and I think I have to edit something in the registery or the BIOS or something, but I don't know what.

Two months later since I've been here and no answer still. Awesome!! I'm still blown away that there's an answer marked for this and that Microsoft refuses to address this issue still....

Good news, everyone! I have found a rather simple solution  from another site. Its not a bug at all. Just mixed up features and i am supprised microsoft tech's could not solve this hehe

I am surprised you audiophiles were unable to find the reason for the delay! I too began by selecting the "Listen to this device" checkbox in the microphone's property dialog. I loved the feature and how it adds the microphone to the new Mixer, but I was very disappointed at the ~1/5 second audio lag that I was experiencing. I plugged in my headphones and tried it again. For reference, I am using an IBM ThinkPad T42p which uses SoundMax Integrated Digital Audio under the plain old AC'97 codec. The very first thing I noticed with the headphones on (aside from the delay itself) was that my voice sounded a bit more 'rounded off' and softened. This lead me to believe that the delay is being caused by post-processing of the incoming audio. Since Windows 7 also has much more advanced integrated speech recognition features, I would figure that such things as echo cancellation would play a part in it too.

As Chris stated "The "listen to" feature wasn't designed for this scenario.". With some thought, I figured this to be true; especially considering the text above the checkbox states "You can listen to a portable music player or other device through this Microphone jack". I unchecked the box and looked elsewhere. Although the Windows audio stack has been completely rebuilt, it still retains the basic functionality of the old Volume Control from Windows XP; the controls have just been made more modular for further customization possibilities. Here is what I did:

-Open the Sound dialog through Control Panel or by right clicking the audio tray icon and clicking "Playback Devices"

-Open the Properties dialog for your Speakers (your device may be different, considering how Windows 7 seems to handle different kinds of hardware)

-Click the Levels tab

-Unmute the microphone

-Apply and close

With the "Listen" option disabled, this solved my problem. No delay and back to the crisp, direct audio I had before! Hopefully, it will work for everyone else experiencing this issu

Hey sydraps, everything is ok, but in my level tab there is not any microphone check to mute or unmute. So your solution does not work for me :(. I have an HP 420 notebook with IDT HD sound codec with Windows 7.