I've been looking online for a while now to solve this issue and nothing has worked for me. When I plug in my headphones they work normally, but don't show up in playback devices or skype's options for example so I can't change the priority. The options to show disabled and disconnected devices are both checked, but nothing but the built-in speakers show, whether my headphones are plugged in or not.
A lot of people online solved this issue through the Realtek HD audio manager, because apparently there should be an option in advanced settings that reads 'Make front and rear output devices play two different audio streams simutaneously.' However, I don't seem to have that option. Only thing that shows up in advanced settings is about recording devices and doesn't make any difference to my situation (I tried messing with that too just in case).
Any ideas...? I have checked for driver updates through device manager and it says there aren't any. I'm using windows 7 by the way.