Question marks on device labels

Audacity 3 Help Forum Windows
1

I have an install of 2.1.0 on a windows 7 machine. I have a Creative USB Sound Blaster as my audio device. When I pull down the input and output lists, most of my devices have “???” at the beginning.
For example, when the line should say “Microphone [USB SOUNDBLASTER]” , instead it shows “??? [USB SOUNDBLASTER]”. Same for other lines. Some lines will have the actual letters in front like “SPDIF [USB SOUNDBLASTER]”.

Assuming this has something to do with language packs maybe in windows. Hopefully someone has seen this before and can recommend because I have uninstalled probably 10 times and have changed every language or locale setting I could find.

Thanks,
Ronnie

2

Are you using a non-English version of Windows?
We’ve seen this on computers that were purchased in Eastern Europe / Asia and if I recall correctly, changing Audacity’s language setting will have no effect on this because the names are being read from the underlying system.

3

It is English version of windows but I think it also supports Chinese characters. Audacity was initially showing Chinese characters.

Everything else in windows shows in English.

4

You could try setting the Windows “system locale”.
Alternatively, if you have the “host” setting in the device toolbar set to “WASAPI”, try setting it to “MME”.