Hi, I read the entire thread trying with you all the solutions proposed but nothing...that headset remained dead.
I have always had the suspect that Windows Media Player played a role in this strange bug, because one of the few things I did the day the headset went down was installing WMP (I always discarded the hardware-bug hypothesis because with Linux the headset always worked perfectly).
I uninstalled WMP as one of the first attemps but nothing...I uninstalled completely (with Revo) & installed again all possible codecs from Realtek (including the new WDM_R207tris.exe downloaded from the official site) but nothing...
Today I tried installing WMP11 and it gave me problems with Skype (!?!?) rebooting the system with a blue screen when I attempted calling.
So I uninstalled WMP11 and the Realtek HD codecs (version WDM_R207tris.exe) installing the same codecs once again and....TADAAA!!! The sound came back on the headset!!
It seems some conflict of codecs between Realtek and WMP...at least in my case (I have an ASUS M51SN)
Hope this can help someone else. For the others...keep trying & good luck!! You'll win at the end...
