Did you upgrade to Audacity 1.3.11. If not, you should. It may not solve the problem, but it might make it different.
Are you sure the background noise is actually background from the room where you are recording?
If you shout, sing or say someting specific during the recording, does it get picked up?
the recording device is set to usb codec, nothing is recording, when i toggled with the configuration, and data was being captured, the waveforms were huge and the recording was really loud and destorted
If you mean you have those set in Audacity Preferences, then I think that bit is correct.
Try this and say if you get stuck:
(The USB device must be connected before you do this)
click Start > Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Sound (if you’re using “Classic View” there’s a direct link to “Sound” in the Control Panel), then click on the “Recording” tab.
Right-click anywhere inside the Recording tab and choose “Show disabled devices” then “Show Disconnected Devices”
Right-click on the USB device icon and choose “Enable”.
Right-click once again over the USB device icon, click Properties then the Levels tab and ensure the volume slider is turned up.
Right-click again over the USB device icon and choose “Set as Default Device”.
If there is an option “Set as Default Communication Device”, then set that as well.
Click the “Advanced” tab, and set the “Default format” to 44100Hz, and the number of “recording channels” to 2 (stereo). Now click “OK”
Go back to step 4 of my previous post and turn the volume down to about half, then use the level controls on your mixer to reduce the level so that it does not distort.