Hi. New to Audacity. We have v.2.3.1 running Win 10. Last week we had our first flawless recording session, but this week trouble. Recording went fine, but when he added a small section to previous unsaved recording, when I pressed play button, we heard part of the audio, but screen instantly went black. Cannot wake or escape.
Help?
Laptop? How close to running out of battery were you?
Koz
Desktop PC
Can we assume you’re posting on someone else’s machine or phone? Can you still hear the fans?
I don’t know of any good way that Audacity or its plugins can cause the display system of a Win10 machine to fail.
It’s not normal, but computers and monitors do fail. You have some of the symptoms of the machine underneath Windows 10 going into cardiac failure.
Unplug, count to ten and replug? Note that everything that was open during the failure may be trash. This is not a good time to leave a bunch of apps running in the background while you work.
Koz
Hi Koz. I have tried everything. It might well be a coincidence. I’m posting from my Kindle now.
I’ve followed instructions from at least 6-7 tech sites, nothing works. Sometimes I get a momentary screen that looks like Windows 10 recovery then blacks out again. Been at this for a couple hrs. Won’t let me access safe mode, nothing. All boot up sequence is normal, fans on, lights and no scary BIOS beeps (used to be a PC tech some yrs ago). Even a Windows 10 Recovery bootable flash drive hasn’t gotten me anywhere. Might be a job for Geek Squad 
Tested the monitor on my laptop, it’s fine. I guess what bothers me is my screen was flickering slightly while using Audacity, and it first blacked using Audacity. I was able to use a Windows 7 Boot disc and at least access Control Panel long enough to uninstall it, but that was the last time I was able to access a screen for more than 2 seconds. This is my work computer, so I’m freaking a little bit now.
I think the fact you were using Audacity is unrelated to the black screen problem. It sounds like your video card was on it’s way out, and you happened to be using Audacity at the time.
Can you boot up into BIOS, so that your BIOS settings are displayed? If you can, do that and leave it on for a while (don’t change any settings). Does the display remain on?
Here I saw a similar problem with Windows 10, screen doesn’t show anything through HDMI, but it does through VGA. If you are using an HDMI wire try to switch to a VGA.
I think the fact you were using Audacity is unrelated to the black screen problem
I agree.
Might be a job for Geek Squad
I agree, if that’s your default repair service.
Now for the least popular post of all time. What happen if the machine doesn’t come back? Do you have your session, data, licenses and programs backed up on separate media?
Do you have enough stuff together to create new sessions?
Koz
Problem solved! Wow that was a lot of drama to find out it was my monitor dying. THANK YOU guys for your suggestions and help!
Went to the Geek Squad, they put my CPU on their screen and it was fine, fired right up. I bought a new monitor but before trying it, I hooked the old one up once more to my laptop. Not sure if I was brain-dead tired last night or what, but this time, it did exactly the same thing with the laptop that it was doing on the Compaq. Flickered, saw a few boot up screens, but always went black. Hey, it was about a 10-12 yr old Sceptre, so it lived a good life.
So I now have a lovely new Acer 24" HD monitor. Yesterday’s session was saved. All’s well, if I can now go dl the latest version of Audacity with no probs.
Now this begs the question: is there anything about Audacity 2.x.x that is likely to put a strain on my graphics chip, which is on the MB? We really need to get back to our recording project which was interrupted yesterday ASAP. I did uninstall Ver 2.1.whatever that was on here. Any caveats for me?
No. Audacity is pretty light on the graphics chip.
Thanks, Steve. Will go get the download now.