Audacity Forum

When I attempt to start Audacity, Windows XP system crashes and reboots. I suspect this is an audio driver problem.

I show two active audio drivers in my Device Manager -- one is the standard USB Audio device from Microsoft -- the other is called Realtek AC'97 Audio.

Any ideas on what my next course of action should be ? how to diagnose what the problem is ?

<<<I suspect this is an audio driver problem.>>>

I suspect you have a very unstable machine. How full is your hard drive? No production machine hard drive should be over 90% full.

If that's OK, go into drive Properties > Tools and do the drive error checker--check only. I probably wouldn't do a defragmentation until we find out more. Or do the fragmentation inspection only and see what the display looks like. If it's covered in red lines, that's not a good thing.

If all that seems OK, Microsoft makes a really nice memory tester...

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

...run that overnight.

Koz

kozikowski wrote:<<<I suspect this is an audio driver problem.>>>

I suspect you have a very unstable machine. How full is your hard drive? No production machine hard drive should be over 90% full.

If that's OK, go into drive Properties > Tools and do the drive error checker--check only. I probably wouldn't do a defragmentation until we find out more. Or do the fragmentation inspection only and see what the display looks like. If it's covered in red lines, that's not a good thing.

If all that seems OK, Microsoft makes a really nice memory tester...

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

...run that overnight.

Koz

Thank you for reviewing my request for assistance -- actually my system has been very stable with the exception of this recent problem. I have more than adequate hardware drive space available.

The drive error checker found no issues.

Try resetting the preferences in Audacity using the special tool:

1. Go to, http://www.gaclrecords.org.uk/audacity.html scroll to the bottom of the page and right-click over "Audacity 1.2.6 reset Preferences .reg file for Windows"
2. Save this .reg file to your drive
3. Double-click the saved .reg file and click "yes" when asked if you want to add the information to the Registry

stevethefiddle wrote:Try resetting the preferences in Audacity using the special tool:

1. Go to, http://www.gaclrecords.org.uk/audacity.html scroll to the bottom of the page and right-click over "Audacity 1.2.6 reset Preferences .reg file for Windows"
2. Save this .reg file to your drive
3. Double-click the saved .reg file and click "yes" when asked if you want to add the information to the Registry

Thanks stevethefiddle -- I had high hopes but the reg update did not cure the problem. And when the system crashes so hard like that I start to worry about other things breaking.

I know in my heart this is an audio driver issue of some kind --

I have a few suspect entries in my device manager list under audio --- one called Microsoft Kernel Audio Splitter with the yellow exclamation point next to it.
The other is the Realtek audio driver i updated recently -- tried to uninstall this guy w/o success. I will just keep at it I guess ....

Audacity is a complete slave to the machine it's running on. If you have exclamation marks in your System Configuration software, then yes, the instant Audacity steps on that service, it could damage the OS and take down the machine. Audacity is the stability inspection service.

Koz

kozikowski wrote:Audacity is a complete slave to the machine it's running on. If you have exclamation marks in your System Configuration software, then yes, the instant Audacity steps on that service, it could damage the OS and take down the machine. Audacity is the stability inspection service.

Koz

Thanks for the input. As I say, I have 1 exclamation point next to the Microsoft Kernel Audio Splitter entry in Device Manager under Sound

I will see about posting an image of this ....

<img src="http://picasaweb.google.com/spaberlejr/DeviceManager#" alt="Dev Manager" />

If the above does not work, go directly to this link :
http://picasaweb.google.com/spaberlejr/DeviceManager#

spaberlejr wrote:I have 1 exclamation point next to the Microsoft Kernel Audio Splitter entry in Device Manager under Sound

I did a Google search and came across a suggestion to re-install the Microsoft Kernel Audio Splitter.
See here for details: http://forums.driverguide.com/showthread.php?t=6435

Also, do you have a "clean install" of Audacity, or have you added any addition effects or plug-ins?
Has Audacity ever launched on his machine?