Cant' Record Input Sound on Vista

[erk]

Help! I have a Dell Inspiron 1501 operating on Windows Vista Home Premium and fitted with a Sigma Tel High Definition Audio CODEC card. I have tried and abandoned Audacity 1.2.6 as every time I tried to record a guitar or microphone I got a flat line. Having read the advice on Vista and recording problems generally I have now down loaded Audacity 1.3.9 (Beta) and still can't record anything other than a float line. The Sigma Tel card appears and is selected in Edit/Preference/Devices and also enabled in the computer Control Panel. I have tried plugging the guitar in direct, via foot pedals and via an external mixer, all to no avail! Any suggestions?

Note that I also have a single track stereo recording programme on the computer (mainly for audio transfer from a 4-track tape recorder) which will pick up a direct guitar input and replay it without problem, so the sound card is working OK.

Regards

Eric

[steve]

When you install Audacity 1.3.x on a computer that has had Audacity 1.2.x on it, the new version will pick up some of the "Preferences" from the earlier version. This is a good thing if the earlier version was working correctly, but can be a source of trouble if it was not.

The first thing to do is to reset the Preferences for Audacity 1.3 and tell it to ignore the 1.2 preferences.
To do this, you need to edit the "audacity.cfg" file and delete everything from it except for the line "NewPrefsInitialized=1"

See here for "how to" details: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... .28Beta.29

If you still have a problem after that, then at least we have a clean start, so let us know how you get on.

[erk]

Steve,

Thank for the advice. I followed the link however I couldn't find any App Data file in the the User folders. I have now removed 1.3 from the computer 9(1.2 was removed before I downloaded 1.3) and may try a download again in the future.

Thanks

Eric

[steve]

I think the AppData folder is a hidden folder, so you need to make hidden folders available in your search.