Screen goes dark when I try to record my mike

[vlindy]

Hello, I'm a first time user and poster. I downloaded the completed version of Audacity onto my XP desktop. All went fine. I'll only be using it to record my own voice and my speaker phone. I have a cheapo mike and decent speakers that sound great with Skype, but when I recorded my voice the sound was very muddled, deep, and distant from my speakers on playback and it looked like there was no way to adjust the tone, so I uninstalled and downloaded the beta version.
Beta downloaded fine, but the 3 times I clicked on the record button for mike my screen instantly went dark. It looks dark but if you turn the light off at night in my room it actally has a faint glow. If I leave it dark long enough my PC automatically reboots. Very weird.
I un-installed the beta version and downloaded it again in the hopes that it would solve the problem, but it didn't. I now have two audacity icons on my desktop, one titled: audacity-win-unicode 1.3.12.exe, and the other titled: Location: C/program files/audacity 1.3. Bete Unicode.
Any suggestions as to what the problem is? Thank you. --vlindy

[Trebor]

You can have Audacity 1.2 and 1.3 both installed on your machine, but you shouldn't run them simultaneously ...

you can have both versions [1.2 & 1.3] installed on the same machine. A couple of issues to note - you cannot run the two versions simultaneously.

http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 420#p92420

... my screen instantly went dark. It looks dark but if you turn the light off at night in my room it actally has a faint glow. If I leave it dark long enough my PC automatically reboots. Very weird.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_screen_of_death ?

[vlindy]

Thanks for the replies. I un-installed version 1.2 so running them both is not the problem. As for the data on black screens of death, the causes are so varied that I have to conclude it's a software incompatibility issue, which spells the death of my plans to use Audacity. Too bad, it seems like a good program and a friend of mine is using it very successfully (Version 1.3.7, I have Version 1.3.12) for the same use that I had planned for it. So unless someone can come up with a brilliant solution, I'll be un-installing it. Thanks and best of luck with the beta version. --vlindy

[kozikowski]

Have you ever run a memory tester? Audacity may be the only software product you have that tries to use all your memory. If you have a bad memory stick somewhere in the high ranges, that would put your computer in the trash bin in a hurry. Most people bypass the login memory test that Windows does because it takes too long, so you would never know if you had a hardware problem.

Audacity runs on hundreds of thousands of computers all over earth, but it is something of a canary in a coal mine. If your computer was very slightly unstable before, it's going to be pretty serious now.

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

Koz

[kozikowski]

Oh, and run it multiple times. Any stable computer should be able to run this test overnight. I've used this test to find a bad power supply and a flaky motherboard as well as bad memory.

Koz

[Trebor]

You could check how much free space you have on your harddrive ...

Disk proprerties (only half full).png (18.45 KiB) Viewed 1078 times

[only thakes a second to check]

deep, and distant from my speakers on playback and it looked like there was no way to adjust the tone, so I uninstalled and downloaded the beta version.

If you manage to get Audacity 1.2 (or 1.3) running you can make the recording sound less "distant", i.e. louder, by using "Amplify" in Audacity’s "Effect" menu,
and can adjust the tone using "Equalization" (graphic equalizer) also in Audacity's "Effect" menu, (reduce the low frequencies below 200Hz and increase those above 2000Hz).