I have sigmatel but I think that might be working okay

Under the device manager there seems to be a mysterious device listed that drops down with 2 devices unknown

I'm not sure but I think the physical connection where I plug line in (microphone) and line out (headphones)is not installed because one time when I tried to fix the problem which it fails to do, it said something about plug and play.  Other software has said the line in and line out is not installed.

I do hear audio and the windows recorder will record sound.  Older software though lacking some compatibility will record sound but new software will not.

The problem that is really annoying me and I believe may lead to resolving all or some of this is the latency

It's not a lot.  Maybe 1/4 of a second but I need it to be precise.  I still have XP on a seperate partition.  It never had that problem and still does not.

There must be a way to fix this but I'm not even sure what is the problem.  Operating system?, Manufacturer? Soundcard? etc.  I've tried a few things but I don't know what it is.  I'm not even sure if most people would notice the latency but I definitely do.