Audacity Forum

I am having this same problem, but none of the responses above seem to asnwer the question for me...

I have successfully recorded from vinyl today, nothing different has happened this time. Just stopped the recording at the end of the tune, and everything in the 'File' options are greyed out. I cannot export. I also can't delete a long period of silence from the middle changeover of the record, which I always just come back and do after - and play sections to check everything is ok - play not working either.

Am on 1.2.6

novice2 wrote:I am having this same problem, but none of the responses above seem to asnwer the question for me...

I have successfully recorded from vinyl today, nothing different has happened this time. Just stopped the recording at the end of the tune, and everything in the 'File' options are greyed out. I cannot export. I also can't delete a long period of silence from the middle changeover of the record, which I always just come back and do after - and play sections to check everything is ok - play not working either.

Am on 1.2.6

Why do none of the responses solve the problem? It's fairly common that on Vista and Windows 7 pressing "Stop" may cause a *crash*. It's a weakness because 1.2 was largely developed before those operating systems came out. Anyone on those systems is better using 1.3.10 Beta:
http://audacityteam.org/download/beta_windows

or 1.3.11 Alpha if you want to use export multiple or export other partial selections:
http://www.gaclrecords.org.uk/audacity- ... -alpha.zip

Stop *failing to work* (which is what is apparently happening to users here) is much less often reported, but the solution has already been described (recover the recorded .au files from the Audacity temporary folder).

One solution that sometimes works in this case is to click File > Exit (which is not greyed out). That should force a Stop and ask you if you want to save your changes. If you press "Yes" you can save an Audacity project. If you press "Cancel", you may find the menus are freed again.

If pressing "Exit" has no effect, go to the Audacity temporary folder. Unless you changed it in Preferences, it's at:
C:Documents and Settings<your user name>Local SettingsTempaudacity_1_2_temp

[For those on Windows Vista/7, the directory is C:Users<your user name>AppDataLocalTempaudacity_1_2_temp]

Navigate to that folder in Explorer, select it, CTRL + C to copy it, then CTRL + V to paste it. It should appear as "Copy of audacity_1_2_temp". Then you can ALT + CTRL + DEL to bring up Task Manager and force quit Audacity. The original "audacity_1_2_temp" folder should still be there, but if not, you have a copy of it. Restart Audacity then tell it not to delete temporary files. Then import the .au files from either temporary folder and cut and paste them to the first track at the top, or use the Crash Recovery Utility.

Note if it's a stereo recording that the .au files will alternate between left and right channel. Crash Recovery Utility will make it easier to handle that if you tell it that you have a two-channel recording.

Since this thread has now got very long, please only post to it if it is directly related to novice2's particular issue or problems arising therefrom. Otherwise, start a new thread for your own particular problem, telling us exactly what version of Windows you are on (Vista, 7 or whatever).



Gale

Thanks, I'll try that next time. I'm only recording from Vinyl so I'm not desperate to recover files like other users, just trying to find out what to do when it freezes like this. I'm just having a real nightmare trying to leave my Dad to use the program to record his vinyl, as every time he tries to record, something goes wrong (and then not being PC literate, he can't work his way out of it). I try and help out, but something like the above problem stumps me and we have to reload up Audacity again and start again. I'll try another version, but am generally very frustrated with the program. we can't get it to work at all on Vista, so had to downgrade to XP, so very frustrating when it continues to go wrong.

Thanks for your help, will give it another go!

novice2 wrote: we can't get it to work at all on Vista, so had to downgrade to XP ...

Some of us would regard that move as an upgrade

You might want to consider upgrading your Audacity to 1.3.11 when it gets released soon - even though it is Beta, it is late Beta and fairly mature now, approaching release candidate status.

You will be able to get it from here http://audacityteam.org/download/ when it gets relaesed shortly. Don't bother with 1.3.10 it has a nasty bug that you will trip over - do wait for 1.3.11

WC

I believe I've encountered the same problem as novice2 (and previous posters):

• I did nothing unusual (stopping/cutting/etc) at the beginning of my recording, other than putting my computer in "sleep" mode briefly prior to recording and waking it back up. (I did this after opening Audacity and prior to pressing Record).
• After loading Audacity, I pressed Record to start recording.
• I pressed Stop to end the recording.
• Now, I can't play or save.
• Most menu items are dim for me, including: Close; Save Project; Export (any exporting); Cut/Copy/Paste; Import (Any); the entire Generate/Effect/Analyze menus.

I can't even access the $#!&#! Preferences menu to see where my temporary files are located. Luckily, I was able to find them manually. For Windows Vista users, here's the directory:

C:UsersYOUR_USERNAMEAppDataLocalTempaudacity_1_2_temp

Once I found this directory, I made a back-up copy of the temp (AU) files. Then, I attempted the "Exit" method mentioned earlier in this thread. It worked! As soon as I selected "Exit" it forced Audacity to ask me whether or not I'd like to save. I saved the file — and upon reopening the file, it functioned normally. Such a simple solution, yes — but it takes a leap of faith, and I'm glad I had my temp files backed up just in case.

In case selecting "Exit" doesn't work for you... I've done the recovery method suggested by stevethefiddle before, so hopefully that will work for you. steve explained the basics, but here's a more detailed explanation:

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... shRecovery

If your file is more than a minute or two long, I'd recommend the automated version. It gets very tedious cutting and pasting several hundred audio clips. It's possible, but not desirable. In the meantime, I am going to investigate newer versions of Audacity so that this problem never, ever happens again.

Version 1.2 of Audacity is not recommended on newer computers. It's not completely stable. In the case of certain Macs, it won't even start.

http://audacityteam.org/download/

Sleep has always been problematic on Windows machines and given Audacity is not a commercial product with thousands of programmers, I'm not shocked that the sleep process would drive it nuts -- particularly the early version.

Koz

I doubt sleep was the problem. It is clearly stated in the Release Notes that pressing Stop after Record may crash. Most people report it as that (Windows usually interjects and says the program has stopped working) though it can also be a freeze.

Note that project saving and re-opening is not completely without issues in Audacity Beta. You would be recommended to export a back up WAV file before saving the project and exiting, just to be 100% safe.

I added a note of the Windows default Audacity temporary directories to the Wiki Crash Recovery page.


Thanks


Gale