Hi! I just got audacity, followed the tutorial for vista, and it worked! - three times 
… I was recording from BBC radio2, and got some fine takes of Mike Harding, each time clicking File/New for each recording. The NEXT time, however, the blue recording patterns went very flat - recording level red went rather low - and when I played back, the voice was very faint and distorted - almost unrecognisable as a human voice. I didn’t change any settings between the 3rd and 4th recordings. Strangely, I went on my other PC to try and get Audacity again, but could not connect to the site - only via CNET. Came back to laptop - same story. So I downloaded Audacity Portable onto PC, but it didn’t appear after install process.
Please help, very frustrated! btw laptop has Vista, pc has 7 Thanks!
So you want us to fix your internet connection? Audacity is a complete slave to whatever the computer is doing. If the computer can’t reach the internet, then you may get flat lines instead of shows.
Did you plug or unplug anything USB at the computer or try to run Skype? Both of those will seriously mess with with a Windows machine. Restart Audacity and if a simple restart doesn’t do it, go back through the instructions to make Stereo Mix available or whatever service you were using.
Koz