Windows Vista vista, volume mixer help

All,
Its been awhile since I posted any questions, found a lot of answers without needing to. Any how I now have a new computer that was built as an "E" machine and is running Vista SP2. I was very slow to move over to it,but I have and any way the issue I'm having is I do not get any audio through the input to the output to speakers as i did in WIN98se and WIN2k. At my desk I used to be able to take the audio input and plug my cassette deck into it and then play it through my monitor speaker on the desk. I get the audio from the computer ok,
media player works ok and the line input is active and see the levels from the cassette deck being indicated, but its as though the audio stops there and goes nowhere. If I click on the speaker on the toolbar it shows speaker and windows applications and I can't find any way to "enable" a sound/audio mixer
as i could on the older systems. I read on the web that Vista is really bad in this area, but maybe I'm missing something. It has on board audio, I'm not sure what it uses for sound, any help would be appreciated!!
Greg

 

Am I correct in saying that when you right click on the audio icon on the taskbar and select recording devices you see the vu bars bouncing but there's no sound coming through?

 

That's exactly what I'm seeing!

 

Are you sure that your external input is plugged into "Line In" as opposed to "Mic In" because "Mic In" shouldn't pass the sound through to the pc's output whereas "Line In" will pass it through. Another thing to watch is that a standard "Line Out" which comes from the output of your cassette deck could easily overload the "Mic In" connection.

 

Just a note, my son came by and got me going, searching by using the term input monitoring got me going. Down loaded a newer codex from Realteck got me fixed I now have the Cassette deck and any other aux audio coming in going back out to my speakers, Win98se had this all the time and you could take in and out no issues, used it a lot, but no newer is better right??? Sometimes yes sometimes,,, what were they thinking about. One reason why I went kicking and fussing about going to a new computer, oh well THANKS FOR YOUR INPUT!!!!!

Greg

 

You're welcome Greg.