I think I disabled the HDD sleep option, I turned off the sleep and hibernate options, and the laptop stays plugged in. The USB has been plugged in, and is plugged in well. I restart the computer after every use, and it’s been making 1 hour + recordings no problem up until last night when it stopped recording, but here’s the strange part… it’s like the signal stopped, and the scrolling cursor was still moving when we hit stop. almost like the USB was unplugged or shut off mid-way in or the board stopped sending the signal (but it didn’t) I am fairly sure the issue is somewhere with the computer and how it’s handling the signal or peripherals but I’m looking for any help I can get.
Thanks so much for anything and all that you guys can do.
If it really is 2.8.x, I’d suggest uninstalling it and installing 2.4.2. else, just upgrade to 2.4.2.
So I’m assuming the pastor is in the same room and you have a microphone plugged into the analog Mixer.
As much as I’d like to agree with you that the issue is with the computer or peripherals, you said the scrolling cursor was still moving, so that looks like data is still coming in but that the data is just zero. Much like if you’d just unplugged the microphone. Did you check all the connections and power to the mixer ?
This is when I would leap to the Solo with my wired headphones to see if the show was still there. Switch the Solo to Direct Monitor and it will pass the recording sound on to you. Make sure the Monitor knob is up and try this once before you need it.
Move onto the mixer. We assume it has bouncing needles or lights for a sound meter. That has to be working.
It should be possible to very quickly get the problem down to a “studio” branch failure.
If everything is OK and it seems the computer is misbehaving, there is a half-way point there, too. Open the Windows Sound Control Panels (speaker icon on the right) and see if those meters are bouncing. Audacity doesn’t get the sound from the Solo, it gets it from Windows.
I was thinking about this later. I missed one. The Solo has knobs that light up green with sound. So I wouldn’t need the wired headphones to make sure the sound was getting that far.
I don’t know that 2.8.x was ever supported. 
else, just upgrade to 2.4.2. 