Roller window on the tool bar

[John Graham]

I have Audacity 1.2.6. and I ran Windows XP PRO with an Intel motherboard. My sound card is the one built into the mother board but it all work excellent, sound and all.

I use the Audacity for about 10 days and the little roller window on the toolbar contained ten items including RECORD MASTER that enabled recording.

Now this ten items source shrank to three only: Line Volume, Mic Volume, and Stereo mix. None of the will record anything. In fact in it will produce a shattering high pitch that threaten to destroy the computer and the speakers together. I went to EDIT/Preferences, on the I/O tab, I went all over the Audacity program but can't find what emptied this store of ten recording sources.

Funny, despite this loss of recording sources, the Audacity interface will play any and all music but will not do recording, and I have my ancient and disintegrating black Vinyl (33-45 rpm) I am trying to move into CD. It workd fine for a while and now stopped.
I have deleted the entire defective Audacity from the computer with the help of "ADD-REMOVE" and re-installed a fresh audacity 1.2.6 but the new program showed up with the same defect. Please help me find the lost recroding sources and restore my audacity.

And I thank you very much.

John Graham

[waxcylinder]

1.2.x is now seriously old and is no longer maintained.

You will almost certainly be better off using the latest Beta 1.3.12. Don't be put off by the Beta labelling - 1.3 is now a pretty mature Beta and is much more stable on most modern computing environments that the older 1.2 series.

You can get 1.3.12 from here: http://audacityteam.org/download/

If you still get problems after that please post again (but in the 1.3/Windows section of the forum.)

WC

[John Graham]

Hello to waxcylinder
Thanks for your ideas but NO JOY...
I removed the Audacity 1.2.6 and installed 1.3.12. But the new program just took me back exactly to square one.

I mean the new 1.3.12 will play any music like the older program, but will record none again like the older program...

It will not even play the sound of the running Vynil disc.

What I am missing is the "Record Master" provision that enabled everything on the 1.2.6 version. In this Beta version there are even two roller stores instead of one, both are full of items to select from but the top important "Record Master", that is missing.

Back to the 1.2.6 oldy, I can't understand what have erased, probably directly from one of the .DLLs files of the program, the entire list of provsions the programmer provided. Sometimes, programmers provide a provision to switch something on or off, and you can find that switch somewhere on the program interface or one of the menus. But here, with the computer at idle, no installing or deleting anything, only recording music, something erased most of the provisions provided in the roller store including the top important "Record Master"

[waxcylinder]

So my next suggestion is to reset your Preferences - see this aricle in the Wiki: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Audacity_Preferences

WC

[John Graham]

Hello to Wax

I knew the problem is in my computer, and created there by Audacity . The explanation in WIKI says that Audacity leaves parts of the deleted program there in case you want to reinstall the program...so you will find your earlier settings. (THIS IS ONE STUPID IDEA)

By past bitter experience I am a bit reluctant to tamper with registry entries so tell me this:

1) I Delete the entire program from ADD -REMOVE,
2) Then go to the registry, go FIND and call for all files of Audacity, delete them all.
3) This will complete the removal of all Audacity from the computer.
4) Then re-install a fresh program
What says you WAX... ? Will it work? Or Audacity hide some more smart ideas somewhere ?

Thanks
John

[steve]

THIS IS ONE STUPID IDEA

I certainly see your point, and to some extent agree with you, but it is very common practice for programs to do this because it can be really annoying to have to set up your preferences all over again just because the program has been updated.
A compromise situation that has been requested on the forum is to have a simple method built into Audacity for resetting the Preferences. However, I seem to remember reading that the preferred approach among the developers is for Audacity 2.0 (when it is eventually released) to ignore the Preferences from version 1.2.x

The situation is far less of a problem with Audacity 1.3.x than for 1.2.x because 1.3.x saves the preferences in an ordinary file rather than in the fearful Windows Registry.

By past bitter experience I am a bit reluctant to tamper with registry entries

And if you are not totally sure what you are doing then that is a very good attitude. It's not at all difficult to completely trash the entire system by a simple mistake in the registry.
So you're now using Audacity 1.3.12?
Assuming the answer is Yes, the safest thing to do is to ignore the registry settings (there's only a couple of registry keys, so it'll do no harm to leave them).
You can get Audacity 1.3.12 to reset its preferences and ignore the registry settings that were made by 1.2.6.

To do this you need to find the file "audacity.cfg". In XP the file is located in:
Documents and Settings<user name>Application DataAudacity
(you will probably need to enable searching for hidden files because I think that by default Windows hides the "Applications Data" folder.)

Ensure that Audacity is not running and 0pen the audacity.cfg file in NotePad and delete everything except for the line:
NewPrefsInitialized=1
Then save. (check that Windows has not added ".txt" to the file name - the file must be called "audacity.cfg")

Restart Audacity and the preferences will be reset.

[John Graham]

Dear Steve
1) First I went back to the ADD-REMOVE and deleted all Audacity that were there.
2) Then I went to C/Program files and removed the folder that contained any thing about Audacity.
3) Then I followed the instructions in WIKI and went to the registry: HKEY-current userSoftware audacity AND DELETED THE ENTIRE FOLDER.
4) Then I downloaded from audacity site a fresh program 1.2.6 and installed it. IT TOOK ME BACK TO SQUARE ONE,with the same defect in the program.

5) I repeated steps 1+2+3+4 a second time, but again it took me to the same defective program I described above.

6) I deleted again every thing as above, Then
7) I went to the registry and used the "FIND" tool asking it to find all Audacity in the system. It found 16 entries...(Sixteen entries) in sixteen different locations. ( I can't understand where all these entries came from, and this is a brand new computer, still free of any problems)

8) Now with the machine clean (or so I believed) of any trace of Audacity, I got again a new program and installed it.
9) It got me back to the defective program that started the whole thing, that is the disapperance of most items from the stock under the roller window, and the loss of the RECORD MASTER that enabled recording. The program can still play any music, it still shows the graph, but if it can't record, I am at a loss what to do next.
Thanks you all for your participation, if there are any more ideas I'll gladly use them
John

[John Graham]

I forgot to mention:
I went to the Audacity folder inside the "aplication data " folder.
I checked the Audacity.cfg file. It was a huge two page list of commands and I have erased it all except the line: <NewPrefsInitialized=1>.
I saved it, closed all, made sure it is <cfg> and not <txt> and recycled the computer. Then restarted the machine and started Audacity again.

It still plays all the music, nothing is missing there, except the seven items in the roller storage with no "Record Master" to enable recording.

I am sure some silly line, somewhere in some file, is the culprit that stop this excellent program from doing what it is so good at. BUT WHERE IS IT?

Any new idea will be welcomed.

Have a nice weekend all
John

[John Graham]

FOR THOSE WHO LIKE HAPPY ENDS ........ Including any of the programmers of this excellent 1.2.6 recording program.

Few hours ago I opened the Audacity and to my dismay, the entire store and the roller of the ten resources on the tool bar was there, but greyed out...as in DEAD...

The "Preferences" line in the <Edit/ preferences> was gone as well. Greyed out.

Just before junking the entire thing I decided to try and record something...and lo and behold, the program work just fine !!! the music graphs work fine and you can hear the music that is recorded better then before.

My conclusions:

The entire store of resources under the roller on the 1.2.6 interface , ditto the double resource stores on the 1.3.12 Beta program are NOT needed!!!

The program can very well work without them. I can't see why they put them there in the first place but for now, at least for me...it works.

Thank you for your attention
John