Audacity Forum

I don't get it. All I've installed recently is Final Draft 8 and Cinergy Script Editor. But for about a week now, Audacity is not working for me. Every time I hit "Play" or "Record" when I'm using the program, it runs slower than molasses and then eventually crashes on me and I have to use Control-Alt-Delete to close it. I've looked at a couple of other people's posts and they seemed to have gotten some help, but I've tried a couple things that I've seen other people suggest. No luck.


Can anybody give me an idea of what I could do to fix this? If not, I'm probably going to save up my money and buy Fruity Loops or something like that.

What operating system?
Which exact version of Audacity?
What else is running at the same time as Audacity?
Is this a laptop or desktop computer?
What sort of sound card?
Anything else that might help?

stevethefiddle wrote:What operating system?
Which exact version of Audacity?
What else is running at the same time as Audacity?
Is this a laptop or desktop computer?
What sort of sound card?
Anything else that might help?

1. Windows XP Media Center Edition
2. It's the 1.3.11 BETA version.
3. Just Norton Antivirus software. That's all I can think of.
4. It's a DELL Dimension E510 desktop computer.
5. An Intel one. I'm not sure about the exact model though.
6. I wish I COULD give some more info that might help, but this is all I have. I just have no idea what it is that is making Audacity crash and burn on me.

Do you do a lot of production on your machine? Do you know how full the hard drive is and/or how big it is?

Hard drives become fragmented if they're used a lot. Programs leave little shards, fragments, and pieces lying around. Audacity will not work into a fragmented hard drive and very few programs will work into a hard drive starting to fill up.

Defrag
-- Right Click Start > Explore > Right Click Local Drive C: > Properties (Used, Remaining) > Tools > Error Checking & Defragmentation

Do the error check (do not fix anything) and then defragment. If you've never done it, you may need a good strong cup of tea and a book. But look at the capacities first. If your hard drive is over 90% full, don't bother defragmenting. It could take weeks. You'll need to move some of your work off the machine and onto an external hard drive, USB thumb drive or someplace else.

Then defragment.

Koz