Hey all y’all, name’s Rem. I’m using Windows 7 with Audacity 2.1.3. Before this I was using 2.1.1, if I recall correctly. In both of these versions I have experienced a very strange bug that’s disrupting my workflow. I’ve _re_installed Audacity 2.1.3 twice now - that is, one upgrade from 2.1.1 and then two fresh installs - and it has not fixed the bug.
So initially it appeared that the transport toolbar and the tools toolbar were both unresponsive. It’s just the buttons - stop, pause, play, skip to beginning, skip to end, and all the tools buttons. They do not function when they are clicked. The keyboard shortcuts for these functions still work, and it’s kind of usable that way. But if I click any one of the aforementioned buttons, at any point while I’m using Audacity, the button doesn’t do anything, and then Audacity locks up silently. It doesn’t even gray out or tell me it’s unresponsive, it just fails to respond to any further interaction, keyboard or mouse. Even the close button doesn’t work, and I had to use the Task Manager to kill the process. Thankfully I haven’t lost any significant work so far.
However, I discovered that it was possible to break out of the lock-up by putting another window in focus - say, Windows Explorer - and then using the keyboard shortcut I wanted to use. The close button responds if I press it when Audacity is unfocused, which saves me the trouble of having to kill the process. So now the issue is actually that if I click any of the butons in the transport toolbar or the tools toolbar, Audacity locks up until the windows loses focus. I thought it might be because I was working too quickly, so after starting the program, I waited a good minute in case it had to buffer a codec library or some other unknown counterintuitive feature, just in case. But that wasn’t it. It also doesn’t matter what the content of the file I’m working with is. This bug occurs whether I drag and drop an mp3 into the editor or I generate a new sine tone track. Menu items such as volume, the drop-down effects lists, the controls on individual tracks, and seeking to specific locations within tracks by clicking with the mouse, all still work as expected as long as Audacity isn’t locked up. Also the Audacity window can’t be moved or brought into focus by clicking on the title bar while it’s locked up.
Altogether, having to work around this is a very inefficient workflow, or more plainly, it stinks. Those are the buttons I use the most. I first noticed this error on August 16th.
Another confounding thing is that I have a dual monitor setup, and for a time, no more than a week, Audacity worked as expected when the window was displayed on one of the monitors, but not when it was displayed on the other. Now it does not work as expected on either monitor.
I’m not sure if this issue is only isolated to Audacity on my computer, because I have had similar (not identical) issues with a select few functions in a select few unrelated programs, such as pressing “record” in my Logitech Webcam control software. But if this is an Audacity problem, how do I fix it? As I’ve said, reinstallation from scratch did not solve the problem, multiple times. And if it isn’t an Audacity problem, my tentative guess is that this is actually a mouse driver issue, but I don’t know how that would be the case, because my Bamboo drawing tablet’s pen also fails to interact with Audacity as expected (though it successfully presses the record button for my Logitech Webcam)…
Thanks for any help you can provide.