Trouble shooting mic input

[Garpocalypse]

Hey everyone, I have recently begun to record myself live and i noticed that when i record using the mic input of my DMX 6fire 24/96 (PCI) the signal is extremely low. Barely above the level of background noise. Once i amp that with guitar rig 4 i have a ton of noise killing the tone of my guitar.

My DMX 6fire is by terratec and the product was discontinued about half a decade ago, so to put it one way, they are not helping me at all.

Before I run out and buy a more current sound card I was wondering if anyone knew anything that I haven't tried yet to get the signal stronger.

Windows XP/ DMX 6fire 24/96 (pci)

I have tried

1. Making sure all of the volume faders were as high as possible on XP

2. Various boost and cut combinations with the soundcard's UI. All of which did nothing to boost the signal or decrease the noise

3. Turning up the gain on the soundcard above the mic input. Increases noise.

4. Boosting the finished recording, applying a noise gate, but the noise still kills my tone.

5. Disabled the drivers for the onboard soundchip.

6. Checking around the net and with terratec for people with similar problems. So far nothing. (the most current post i could find was from 2007)

7. Swapping out various cords (all have the same amount of noise)

8. muted all options on the soundcard. verified noise only comes from the mic.

Everything i have tried either does nothing or increases the level of noise.

I was using a mic earlier today and to get any kind of decent sound i felt like i had to scream into it at very close range to get something close to usable. This has occured with everything that goes into the mic input and it's always the same level of noise with the same level of signal.

This leads me to believe that maybe my mic input is fried? I have been using the sound card for about a decade now and i used to mess around with my bass going directly into the mic jack (when i was a dumbass and didn't know what a DI box was) could that have destroyed my soundcard?

Is there anything in XP that i haven't tried that would be the solution to my problem? I find it strange that I can get a decent sound just with no way to get it above the level of background noise.

Thanks for any help you can give.

-gar

p.s. Terratec has been no help, they don't even offer the drivers for my soundcard anymore.

EDIT: should nothing else work i'm looking to get this

http://www.esi-audio.com/products/julia/

[Moseph]

If you have a multimeter you could pull the thing apart and test the jack to see if there's a bad connection somewhere.

[Garpocalypse]

no multimeter.

If it does sound like it's a problem with the sound card after all then i'm just going to update.

Now where's that sound card thread i saw a couple weeks ago...

[Garpocalypse]

I think i'm on to something.

I found out that if I rotated one of my guitar cables I would eventually have a sweet spot where signal levels would be recorded as normal. It just seems to be one cable though that this is possible with. The other cables seem to do no better.

I reported this info on another forum and it was suggested that I might have some corrosion in the mic jack and that a remedy would be to lube up a 1/4" male end with wd40 and punch it through the mic jack a few times. (i really really tried to phrase that as pc as possible)

Before i go wrecking my $200 sound card (in early 2000 $'s) with a $5 can of wd40 I was wondering if anyone else here would do something like that or know of another alternative?

[Moseph]

I'd suggest spraying the jack with electrical contact cleaner rather than WD-40.

[Garpocalypse]

Thanks moseph.

I'm planning on a studio upgrade soon (windows 7 here i come!) but this will help me stretch what i have a little further.