Audio dropout only at beginning of recording

Windows 11 here. Running on an Acer Nitro 5 laptop. I have had audacity for years, and this problem has only started today after I updated it. Not sure if the update is relevant. It’s been about a month since I last used Audacity.

The issue I am having is I am getting the error message of "Recorded audio was lost at the labeled locations. Possible causes:

Other applications are competing with Audacity for processor time

You are saving directly to a slow external storage device"

The dropout is only ever labeled right at the beginning of the recording. When monitoring CPU usage in Task Manager, it peaks at around 10% total usage (not sure about Audacity specifically, that’s just for all processes) and then goes back down. Changing the priority of Audacity in Task Manager does not help either. I don’t think CPU usage is the issue, unless 10% total usage with Audacity as top priority is too high? The only solutions I can find online are to lower CPU usage, and so I cut down on all background processes I possibly could to no avail. It’s only right at the beginning and so not really an issue, however I would not like to turn off droput detection in case I start having real issues and the popup is annoying me. Is there anything else that can cause this?