cannot get mic from earbud headphones to work

I cannot get the mic on my earbud headphones to work. This is not a hardware issue because they work both on my iphone and my window 7 laptop. However, I cannot use the mic on this desktop which is making it impossible to use stuff like discord and other group call platforms. I notice that the pc has separate jacks for headphone and mic. I have a splitter cable for that. The sound works just fine. Even if I only plug into the mic jack the mic still doesn't work. I have uninstalled and reinstalled realtek audio driver multiple times. I also checked to make sure its set to default and its not muted, its turned to max.  If I connect via bluetooth to a bluetooth headphone then sound and mic both works just fine as well. But bluetooth means it could run out of battery. I can only assume its the front mic jack that's the problem if my mic works fine on other devices, sound works fine, and mic connected via bluetooth works fine. Does anyone have any advice on how I could fix this? Keep in mind I'm not super familiar with computers, so something detailed would be great.