Need help removing mic hiss

[cirwin2010]

I am having a problem with mic hiss. When ever I use something like skype or anything else that requires a mic there is a rather loud hiss. I have a x-fi titanium (non hd) sound card and my mic is a zalman zm-mic1. I had this same issue with my old headset and assumed it was just the headset mic. On my sound card I can't seem to change the boost of the mic in order to try to lower it because surprisingly the option is not there in the windows 7 recording controls. When I plug the mic into my onboard audio I can remove the hiss by   lowering the mic boost but then nobody can hear me and the mic is pretty close to my mouth. 
 
Am I missing something? Is there something I can do to fix this?

 

[cirwin2010]

bump

 

[Honkytime]

How close do you sit to your computer? and does your computer have a lot of fans? I had to move my configuration as my zalman clip on mic was actually picking up the fan noise of my pc.

 

[cirwin2010]

My fans do make a small amount of noise but after some testing it definitely not the problem.

 

[cirwin2010]

Whoa! Something rather interesting I found. If I plug my mic into the front panel connector which is plugged into my sound card I get no static! I will continue to use this in the mean time but I wonder why my back panel audio has all this static and you would think that the back panel would have better quality.