I recently bought the Hype Tape-to-MP3 Portable Player and Converter. I have been trying since last week to get it to work, including staying up late at night. I just don’t know what to do anymore. I have a Windows XP computer. I’ve installed the Audacity 1.2.6 several times only to uninstall it because it caused the sound from the other audio applications and the computer sounds, chimes etc. to shut off. Also, the instructions on how to Audacity is confusing. I tried recording only to get a “straight line” or when I do have waves, I don’t have any sound. Any advice would be appreciated. I’m considering throwing the converter and the Audacity CD in the trash and kicking myself for wasting money. I just registered to this website, so if I’m in the wrong forum, I sincerely apologize. Thank you. I just can’t cope with the frustation any longer.
For a start do yourself a big favour and upgrade to the latest Audacity 1.3.14 - 1.2.6 is ancient now and no longer maintained/upgraded. You can get 1.3.14 from here: Audacity ® | Downloads
And then have a good read of this set of tutorials from the 1.3 manual: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Tutorial_-_Copying_tapes,_LPs_or_minidiscs_to_CD
BTW the reason that you are not getting sound played back is down to XP and not Audacity - basically XP is assuming that whenn you plug your USB tape device in that it should not just divert sound input but also output to your tape device - and it doesn’t have speakers! All this is explained in the tutorials along with how to fix it.
Once you get the hang of it it’s quite straightforward - so do persevere 
WC
That’s pretty weird about your system starting to make funky noises. Not sure why that
would happen.
For recording in Audi126, you need to change the device that Audaicity “listens” for when
recording. You do that through:
(main menu) Edit | Preferences | (tab) Audio I/0 | (section) Recording | (drop-down) Device
I usually use Microsoft Sound Mapper for input.
Why do you need Audacity anyway, doesn’t the convertor just convert your tape audio to
mp3 or something? Trying to use Audacity to make cuts? I’m confused…
Tapes were awesome. I’m thinking of making a new coffee book featuring photos of bad
tape mishaps…like the one’s where it turns into a big ball of cellophane in your car
deck. I know there must be TONS of people around with such photos.
Ideally you should have posted on the “Audacity 1.2.x > Windows” part of the forum (as that is what you are using), but as Waxcylinder posted it would be best if you upgraded to Audacity 1.3.14 (from here: Audacity ® | Downloads ).
Most of the official documentation has been written for the 1.3.x version of Audacity so the tutorial that waxcylinder posted the link for should make more sense once you have upgraded to the current Audacity (1.3.14) version.