Audacity Forum

When trying to record, I hit the record button, but the pause button depresses at the same time and it will not release. I`ve obviously disabled this in some way. Any suggestions? Many thanks.

Could you check in Audacity "Help > About Audacity" and say exactly which version you are using.
Have you customised the key bindings (keyboard short cuts)?
Does the problem persist if you reboot and start a new project?

I`ve looked at this a bit closer and I suspect that it has become corrupt in some way. Sometimes when I hit the record button, it starts moving but will not record anything - just a straight line in each channel. While this is happening, the pause button won`t work at all. It will only stop with the stop button. Other times, hitting the record button also depresses the pause button which will not release, but there`s no movement. While in this state, if I speak or make any noise, the PC mic picks it up and Aud. starts to move and record, but stopping again as soon as the sound stops!!
To answer your questions - I am using version 1-3-12 beta for Vista, as you recommended a while back, which has always worked fine until a few days ago. I have not knowingly done any customising for keyboard shortcuts, and the problems do persist after reboot. Maybe deleting and re downloading???

Try resetting the Audacity Preferences.

To do this, you need to find the file "audacity.cfg"
On Windows Vista this file will be in Users<user name>AppDataRoamingAudacity
Open audacity.cfg in a text editor such as Notepad and remove all the content except the line NewPrefsInitialized=1
Save the changes to audacity.cfg and restart Audacity

I re set preferences as you suggested and this got things back on track, except for the fact that it still would not record anything.
In the end I deleted and re downloaded Aud. and bingo! - works perfectly. Must have been something I`d inadvertently tweaked on the earlier version. Anyway, thanks once again!

I am facing the same problem here. In my case when ever i tried to recording it again it goes to pause automatically and after some period of time it will automatically stopped downloading. i am facing the problem many times. plz help me.