So I bought a microphone at a yard sale. Nothing fancy just one of the cheap ones that would only cost you a couple bucks anyway if bought new. I decided to plug it into my Desktop with Windows 10 to see if it would work.
I recently bought my nephew's desktop with Windows 10 already installed. I'm tempted to format the thing and put Linux on it. I've been fooling around with Linux on my older computers on and off but not yet ready to jump in full time. To many technical issues to work out. Back to the mic.
I decided to click around in the sound settings to see if I could get this thing to work and I did. I right clicked on the sound icon, down by the clock, and then clicked on Open Sound settings or just type sound settings in the search box and click on it when it appears in the menu.
Scroll down slightly to the Input options. Where it says Choose your input device, choose Microphone if not already chosen. In my case it was the only option.
Then click on the Device properties just under that. In the Microphone Properties window that opens, I clicked on the Listen tab.
On that tab then I checked the box next to Listen to this device and once I clicked apply, my mic was working. So that's how I got mine to work. Now I'm trying to get my web cam to work. If I can figure it out, an article for another time.