Audacity won't recognize Snowball mic

[Gudie]

I had my Snowball usb mic working. After updating to 1.2.6, Audacity won't recognize my Snowball microphone. I use Windows XP Home on a recently purchased Dell Laptop. Any idea what might be causing the problem?

[steve]

Can you confirm whether "upgrading to 1.2.6", or changing to the Dell laptop, made the difference?
Do you still have your old machine? Does the mic still work on that?

[Gudie]

I have only used the mic on this new Dell laptop. The problem may be more than just Audacity. In testing the voice hardware through control panel, it indicated that XP has trouble recognizing the mic as well. I have support call into Blue Microphones. I will let you know what I discover. Thanks for your reply.

Blue Microphones gave me a firmware upgrade which got Audacity to recognize the Snowball. It still won't record. Audacity give this error message " Error while opening device. Please check input device settings and project sample rate." I''ve played with various combinations of settings but I keep getting the same error message. How can I find out I/O settings for Snowball mic in Audacity?

[steve]

How can I find out I/O settings for Snowball mic in Audacity?

The usual setting to screw things up is the sample rate.
"Edit > Preferences > Quality"

You will need to check the Snowball documentation for the correct setting, though I would guess 48000.

Also check that the Snowball USB is not selected for playback in "Edit > Preferences > Audio I/O"