How are you launching Audacity? If you are right-clicking an audio file > Open with Audacity, or opening an AUP project file, try just double-clicking Audacity from the installation folder instead.
After opening Audacity successfully the last time, did you change the audio playback or recording devices in Windows?
If you see “Audacity is already running” this can mean an old 1.2 version of Audacity is already running. Make sure you have uninstalled 1.2 if you ever had it. When you see “already running” you can open Windows Task Manager to close other Audacity processes.
If there is another 2.0.x process running it will almost certainly be a VST plug-in scan. The scan may happen if you don’t have any VST plug-ins. If you want you can try quitting Audacity and turning off VST plug-in support in the audacity.cfg settings file. You can find audacity.cfg at UsersAppDataRoamingAudacity. You may have to show hidden files and folders before you can see the AppData folder.
When you are in UsersAppDataRoamingAudacity, paste in the attached “audacity.txt” file, renamed to “audacity.cfg” (without quotes). Now start Audacity and see what happens. Make sure it is not running in Task Manager before you start it.
Gale
audacity.txt (55 Bytes)