Upgrade to 2.0.6 does not recognize USB Device

Ordered the Jumbl Tape to Digital Converter which contained an installation CD for Audacity 1.2.6 and the lame.dll. Everything worked fine but I was unable to burn the mp3 files to a CD-R or a DVD. So I went online to the Audacity webpage and discovered that I was using an outdated version of Audacity so I downloaded the upgrade to my Windows 7 desktop and to my Windows 8.1 laptop. Now I can’t record anything! The program does not recognize my USB audio device!
I don’t know whether to just uninstall the new version and start over or what! Now I can’t even play the tapes on my computer that I had previously recorded because they are in the old version and 2.0.6 doesn’t recognize the files.
Please advise me what I should do!

Audacity does not (and never has) interfaced directly with hardware devices. Audacity gets sound from the computer sound system. Audacity is only able to “recognize” a device if the computer sound system recognises it. Look in the Windows Sound Control Panel to see if your device is recognised and enabled in Windows.

Normally you would connect the device before launching Audacity. Audacity only looks for devices when it is first launch unless you specifically tell Audacity to “rescan for new devices”.

That mean, if you connect a device while Audacity is open, Audacity will not see it until you either:

  1. close and restart Audacity,
    or,
  2. “Transport menu > Rescan audio devices”.