sound issues?

[himynameiskyle]

when i record anything, after a few seconds, the sound will start cutting in and out and then reduce to little to no volume. it still records, it just gets very quiet. it sounds like this would be an issue of being too loud, but even when i only talk into the mic, the same thing happens. im using windows vista. i should probably also mention that it doesnt happen all the time, sometimes i get awesome sounding recordings. but others, the sound cuts in and out and then gets suddenly quiet. and sometimes it says "audacity has encountered a problem and needs to close" if that means anything. this happens quite frequently and is very aggrevating because i lose everything i had just recorded. i use audacity for live recordings of my band, and when we finish a song i find that either audacity has "encountered a problem and needs to close" or i run into the sound problem i explained earlier. this is annoying because i dont enjoy playing the whole song again in hopes that we wont run into that problem again (which in most cases is never) so we end up not being able to record.

[kozikowski]

<<<even when i only talk into the mic>>>
<<<im using windows vista.>>>

People always ask these questions with attention to the wrong bits. Describe exactly what happens between your lips and Vista. Don't leave out any model numbers.

Audacity is a complete slave to the computer it's running on. Audacity by itself is very stable, but if anything goes wrong anywhere else, Audacity will go straight into the dirt.

Koz