Thanks all,

I muted my mic and it works fine. Though, I was hoping that I could have had my cake and ate it too. Shouldn't the mic be independent of the speakers? I hate to think that I have to disable it and renable it between playing games and using my voice messenger. Seems silly. Never had to do it with my old computer. The mic simply became enabled by the software that needed it...I guess.

BTW- yes, I posted this on the MSI forum, but I didn't get much help.

Thanks for the kind welcome,
Cheers,
Han