Audacity HANGS in XP after 1 successful export session

[jan.kolar]

Hmm, I have an experience that could be related:

Audacity 1.2.6 crashed for me imediately before a live recording. I could do anything else then start 1.2.6 immediately again and start the recording. After approximately 50 minutes (probably pressed only Stop and Record buttons during that time), I stoped the recording and Audacity crashed again.

(Fortunately it was easy to recover the project by inserting the block files into other 60minutes record-only project).



This are details:
Network WiFi - see below,
Windows Vista (I guess my crash could be equivalent to the hang in our XP),
some norton antivirus running (I know it better should not), Powerpoint-like part of OpenOffice, USB flash, an USB device to browse the presentation (like mouse buttons)
And the most striking: the only difference to other succesfully recordings is this one: WiFi was switched on (by a switch on laptops front edge) but Vista did not initialize network (perhaps because no signal at that point?).
Few hours later, with the same task (long record) on a different place, still with WiFi on, I had no problem a Network was mentioned to be inicialized (not connected) in Vista's Logs.



Cody, thank you for narrowing when this happens and for "FYI".

Please keep in mind that the issue can vary over time since, after switching the network on, there are many minututes of network negotiations, and many hours when sleeping applications weak up that are hungry for updates.

[Cody]

OK ... I'm back into my recording sessions and I am now CONVINCED that the HANG that I receive has to do with my NETWORK being Active. I had done something like 15 successful recording sessions since my last post. All of these done with NO Internet or Wireless connectivity active. (This is my Primary machine connected directly to my Wireless Router.)Then I needed to download something, so I reactivated my Internet connectivity and decided to see if the problem (hang) cropped back up again. Mind you, the Internet connection was made, I shut down, and rebooted the foloowing day to begin a recording. After the system was booted up and active, I started a Recording of an album. 8 Mins. into the recording, AUDACITY Hung up. Once again, when I tried to Stop the process, my entire system HUNG and I had to Power/Reset to get it back.

Now, the other interesting part is that even after Disabling my Network Connection, every attempt to record something HUNG again -- at various locations in the recording, requiring a Power/Reset. I tried this after 3 reboots - each time resuling in a HANG. So I UNINSTALLED Audacity and DELETED the Audacity Directory that holds the configuration file. Then Reinstalled it. Low and behold, I am now able to record multiple albums without a HANG...

So my conclusion to all of this is: I can't have any Network connectivty and if I *do* experieince the HANG, I must delete all of AUDACITY directories and reinstall it. Thsi is the only way I seem to be able to have it stabilize. Oh, and I have TONS of disk space -- Audacity notes "98 hours of recording space available".

[steve]

if I *do* experieince the HANG, I must delete all of AUDACITY directories and reinstall it.

I've not read all of this thread, so apologies if I'm repeating something that's already been said (it's rather a long thread), but you may be able to achieve the same fix by just deleting the configuration file without un-installing and re-installing Audacity. (Audacity will recreate a configuration file when it is restarted, putting it back to "fresh out of the box").

[Cody]

Thanks Steve ... I'll try JUST that if the problem occurs again...

[jan.kolar]

Cody, I do continue listening to your case.

And I am sorry to hear your troubles continue in unexpected way. It sound kind of improbable to me.

Is it possible that your computer needes one (or two) clean reboots after closing the network? (Instead of reinstalling audacity?) What I mean are reboots with regular shutdown, not from a hang.
Also you might need to repear your disks after the hung: c: -> Properties -> Tools -> Check Now (or chkdsk /f c:).
I am doing this after most crashes of my computer, in order not to loose data I save in future(!).
It might be messed after hung during activity like recording -- in particular the TempDir of Audacity could be broken.

I can imagine your computer has problem to realize it is off network without reboots.
It is hard to imagine something gets stuck in Audacity's configuration.There is not much more than TempDir (directory where audacity stores data unless you saved the empty project BEFORE recording).
Also you perhaps deleted directories corrupted by hung, doing what chkdsk whould do more carufully.
BTW would be nice if you rename audacity.cfg file instead of deleting so that we can look happend inthere.

[Cody]

Thanks Jan .... I'll try to remember to just rename that file the next occurrance rather than just delete it....

[Cody]

Well, I guess I've been suspecting the wrong issue (e.g., Network connection)... The HANG happened again to me yesterday -- I had network connectivity running, DISABLED the network, started a freshly-installed-and-configured Audacity ... Made 2 successful recordings & exported them (MP3). Then on my 3rd attempted session, it hung 1:25 mins. into the recording. Had to Power/reset machine.

I'll rename the audacity.cfg file before restarting things... do you want me to email you the file??? If so, where do I send it?

[steve]

I'll rename the audacity.cfg file before restarting things... do you want me to email you the file??? If so, where do I send it?

It's just a text file, so you could open it with Notepad, then copy and paste it onto the forum.
If you use the

Code: Select all

 button in the forum message editor it will insert a pair of tags - paste the contents of the config flle between the two tags lke this:

[c[i]o[/i]de]
paste your stuff here
....
[[i]/[/i]code]

[Cody]

OK... will do ... another update: yesterday afternoon I booted up my machine to try again. This time, the very 1st album experienced a 'similar-but-different' issue on the 2nd song of the album. What happened was Audacity was outputting a steady/stuck "hiss" sound after about 1.5 songs in... although the album was clearly playing music. Very strange. However what was 'different' was that I could actually shut down Audacity - it hadn't hung up my machine like the previous experieinces. So I simply restarted Audacity, and successfully completed *1* full album recording and export (MP3). I shut down Audacity, relaunched it, and started a 2nd album ... and you guessed it -- Audacty hung about 3 songs in and hung up my machine when I tried to 'X' it. Power reset again... I think I'll do a full uninstall again, delete the TEMP working directory & config directory, and try again. These actions seem to be the only things that get me more than 1 or 2 albums in a row.

I'll post the code from the .cfg file a little later. Thanks...

[Cody]

OK, I give up ... Sorry .... I just can NOT get this thing to stablize on my system. I went as far again as totally removing and reinstalling. I also deleted all directories to get a 'fresh start'. Today, after rebooting my system and starting the recording, I only got 5 mins. into the 1st recording session and it HUNG -- again crashed my machine when I clicked on 'X'. I just can't continue doing this and having my system crash. It's turned into a waste of time for me.

If there's anything I can provide you, let me know... In the meantime, I've moved back to PYRO ... as much as I hate their editing interface.

See ya.