Headset audio issues on Windows 7 and Windows 10

Alright, so I’ve got this issue and I’ll try my best to keep it short so you guys actually get what I'm saying. I'm running an ASUS H81 MK motherboard and a Logitech G230 headset.

Here's the deal:

On Windows 7, my motherboard just won't recognize the headset at all. I get to that part where it's supposed to prompt me to identify the device, and... yeah, zero luck. I can't even "unlock" the option to get that 10/20/30 dB boost for the microphone levels.

It was driving me absolutely insane, so I figured, why not just try Windows 10?

And honestly, everything works perfectly right out of the box there. I can boost the dB exactly how I want it. The mic is loud and sounds great. It's such a huge contrast to Windows 7, where the audio quality is just a total disaster. I mean, I'd say my phone vibrates louder than my microphone sounds when I'm on Windows 7.

Now, I'm pretty sure it's a driver issue since Windows 10 just handles all the installs automatically. But even after trying to manually install everything on Windows 7, I'm still stuck with this super quiet headset.

Is this just me messing something up, or is Windows 7 just being difficult?

The thing is, I'd really love to go back to Windows 7 because I just prefer using it more, so... yeah.

Just grab the Logitech G230 headset driver from their site and you should be all set. It really ought to work just as smoothly as it does on Windows 10, right?

I can't find any driver for my Logitech G230 headset on Windows 10 at all. 😁
It's just your standard stereo headset anyway, not some fancy 7.1 virtual surround thing.
I mean, I really doubt the headset driver would even be the issue here.

EDIT:

So, I checked the Logitech site and yeah, they don't even have a driver for this headset. Just like I thought. It looks like they only provide drivers for people using their specific USB sound cards.

The motherboard might be acting up or something. I'll probably just shoot an email over to ASUS and see what they have to say about it. ^^

Usually, when you grab the driver, you also get the manufacturer's dedicated audio suite. It’s got way more advanced settings than what you'll find natively in Windows.
Have you checked the ASUS website for your specific motherboard to see if they have something like that?

Just out of professional curiosity—what was it about Windows 10 that didn't sit right with you? Why the itch to go back to Windows 7?

https://ibb.co/fJqNKv

So, here's the deal. In Windows 7, it just won't let me crank up my mic boost to 10, 20, or even 30 dB, which is super annoying. But then, like you can see in the screenshot, on Windows 10 it works perfectly fine right out of the gate.

Another headache I'm dealing with—specifically on Windows 10—is that Bandicam isn't picking up any of my recording codecs at all. My GPU definitely supports H.264, but it’s just totally missing from the codec list in Bandicam on Windows 10; all I see is MPEG-1. It's weird because back on Windows 7, everything showed up just fine, including Xvid, H.264, MPEG-1, and the whole nine yards.

Everything's just acting up. 😁

EDIT:

I checked the ASUS website for this motherboard, and they've only got the Realtek audio driver listed, nothing else really worth mentioning. So I went ahead and installed that, but yeah, I'm still stuck with the exact same issue.

Why don't you give this little utility a shot? https://sdi-tool.org/

It automatically scans your hardware and pulls up the drivers you actually need—so it isn't just one of those annoying programs that tries to bundle a bunch of junk or bloatware onto your system. It's portable, too, which makes it pretty straightforward to use.

Thanks, I'll probably mess around with that tonight.