Issues with sound card

I use an HP pavilion laptop, and yesterday the sound started to screw up. I normally keep my headset (20$ generic brand from best buy) plugged in 24/7 unless I go out and need to use it to listen to music on my phone. Yesterday I went out and took the headset, but when I got back I started to have problems with the sound card on my computer. First of all I have to say that the headset isn't the problem, I tried a pair of earbuds on my laptop and it still didn't work right, and the headset still works perfectly fine on my phone. What happened at first, I had gone to a skype call and tried to join, but when I attempted to it said skype could not access my sound card. This problem has since been fixed, but skype only recognizes my headphones and not the mic part of the headset. The headphones only work with what they feel like. Chrome works with the headphones and so does skype, but games (I only tested it with garrys mod, and civilization V, but I doubt it would work for others) and Itunes don't seem to recognize the headphones. With the speakers disabled for testing purposes, I get this on the bottom right of my screen, and mousing over it says no speakers or headphones are plugged in, but I still get sound from the headphones from some applications. I've tried unplugging them and plugging them back in, restarting the computer, updating the drivers (with driver booster), but nothing seems to be working. None of the solutions i found on google seem to work either.

 

3.5 mm

 

I also ran a troubleshooter for audio problems, and it said the problem was that the headphones weren't the default device. When I clicked set as default, it seemed to ignore my input. http://puu.sh/afnbo/2d12d8591c.png

 

Sorry for the triple post, but it's been nearly a week since I brought up this problem here. Does anybody have a solution for it?

 

Hi, have you tried a system restore back to a time when you know it was working correctly?

If a system restore cures it, we will know for sure it is a software problem only, if however it doesn't we will know it may be hardware.

Nev.

 

Unfortunately, I'm a complete computer derp that doesn't know how to do a system restore.