Sigmatel HD Audio--mic isn't detected--V Ultimate

Intel's troubleshooting isn't updated for Vista so I'm trying here.

Rebuilt my computer last year for Vista using a D945Pvs motherboard that has
onboard Sigmatel HD audio. the speakers work just fine, but it's not
detecting the microphone at all.

So far, I had to uninstall the sound and installed the driver from Intel for
it instead of the one that Vista offers. Note that Intel's site said this
was a Vista driver.

However, the driver made my system so unstable that it would crash (that
blue screen of death is back in Vista!) after about a minute once you signed
on. I wound up rolling the system back instead of switching the drivers.

I still have no microphone... any suggestions? Apparently, the generic
driver doesn't support it.