Just to narrow down the suspects …
- Re-installing Audacity does not do anything (unless Audacity was damaged). See https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/resetting-audacity/50613/1
- The LAME library is not needed with the latest Audacity.
- Reinstalling FFmpeg should not have any effect unless you were using that library to import or export files with uncommon formats.
So it seems to be down to the “soundboard” (what is that?) or the I-12 drivers.
Also, it seems the order of doing things may have been important (you rebooted the “soundboard”, then the laptop and then things worked).
– Bill