Record button Crashes PC. always.

[coldhart7]

I installed Audacity a few days ago for the first time and it does not work.

My Computer (Laptop)
Fujitsu Lifebook (Tablet PC, required by college)
Windows XP TabletPC edition
2.2 Ghz Pentium 4
2 GB RAM
plenty of hard drive space
headset with mic

Everything works fine with windows sound recorder and I have no issues with any other programs on my computer. My computer is less than 3 months old, my drivers are up to date and I have no malware of any kind.

I was able to download and install the stable version of Audacity the first time with no trouble (used the .exe), and was able to open the program and everything looked fine. Right when i pressed the record button, I got the "blue screen of death" with writing on it of course, but the computer shuts down too quickly to read any of it, restarts, and the dialog for an error report appears, saying that "Windows has recovered from a serious error."

Trying a second time and using google to search for similar troubles proved fruitless, so I uninstalled the stable Audacity and installed the beta version (I also tried after restarting my computer the conventional way, and with and without the mic plugged in, and looking through the options). The result of a system crash was identical with the beta version. I have since uninstalled both but would like to someday be able to record.

If anyone can help, it would be appreciated.

I have not tried on any other computers to see if my process is somehow leading to a crash, since I have not yet had access to any other (my home?) computers. Maybe over thanksgiving break. Any ideas?


Edit: I am not using any plugins and have no other programs open when operating Audacity. The pause button works fine (seemingly. I don't actually have anything to pause).

[kozikowski]

<<<I don't actually have anything to pause.>>>

Record something brief with that Windows recorder thing and see if that will open and play in Audacity.

...Pressing Record sends a Windows XP machine into blue screen....ummm.........

<<<with and without the mic plugged in>>>

Just for form, what kind of mic?

Are you an Administrator on your machine, can you go into Control Panels, Users and Passwords and see yourself with Administrator permissions?

Anything odd about your network? VPN Service? Is there an intentional spy/supervisory server running? Remote desktop?

I'm always said that Audacity is the window through which you view your computer. 1.2.x is a very stable release and many times people find their machine is actually broken or doing something very bad. I know you're going, "What did your software do to my machine?" It might be, What's going on with my machine that it can't run a simple, stable editing program?

If you go down through the Audacity preferences, are any of them irrational? Are you pointing to a capture drive that isn't actually there? Are you set to capture 16 tracks of audio, all at maximum quality? You may need to restart Audacity before some of the preferences take affect.

If it continues to do this, I'm going to send you to the Microsoft Memory Tester. It involves making a bootable CD. Are up up for that? Your laptop won't boot from a floppy, right?

One more. Do you have any programs that can do really big things? Like open up Photoshop and generate a very large noise frame and then do a gaussian blur on it. Anything that can stress the machine.

Koz

[kozikowski]

Download either of these and see if you can play them.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/soundtests.html

Koz

[kozikowski]

Wait, you used the .exe file? What happens if you go back up and download the zip file instead and use that installer? The zip file is much older and has more miles under its belt. The .exe file is relatively modern.

Koz

[alatham]

What kind of sound card do you have? Is it the built in sound card on your motherboard? What does Windows XP call it in the Device Manager list?

There are two things I can think of off the top of my head:

1) You may have something set very strange in the Audacity's Edit -> Preferences -> Audio I/O menu. This is the menu you use to select your input and output sources, if Audacity is set to use something it doesn't expect, I can see that causing problems. I doubt it would crash so severely, but who knows?

Make sure that's set to the same sound card you're using to play any other sound on your computer. Also, take Koz's advice about making sure Windows Sound Recorder (Start Menu -> Accessories -> Entertainment) will record without problems. That will test your sound card. If it works, make note of the Edit -> Audio Properties menu in Sound Recorder, that will tell you which input and output source to set Audacity to use.

2) This is the first I've heard of anyone using a TabletPC with Audacity. There might be compatibility issues with either the OS (since it's a separate edition of XP), or the "mouse" driver. Do you know if there is a way to plug in a regular mouse and temporarily disable the drivers for the touchscreen? If you can, try that and see if Audacity still crashes and burns.