Audacity Forum

Audacity keeps crashing whenever I open any file type (except MIDIs) or play any audio file. Even when I finish recording something, it still crashes! I have version 2.4.2, and this started happening 3 months ago.

Fun fact: To play audio files, I've been using VLC, but that'll change whenever I'm able to fix Audacity.

TheDevinBro wrote: ↑

Mon Feb 08, 2021 6:29 pm

Audacity keeps crashing

When you say "crashing", do you mean that the application entirely disappears, or freezes?
Is there any kind of error message?

TheDevinBro wrote: ↑

Mon Feb 08, 2021 6:29 pm

Even when I finish recording something, it still crashes!

Does Audacity offer to recover the project when you re-launch it?


Have you tried resetting Audacity?
To reset Audacity, open the hidden folder: and delete these three files:

• audacity.cfg
• pluginregistry.cfg
• pluginsettings.cfg

It freezes and says it's not responding.

OMG thanks so much

I was able to delete those files and it works now!!! I thought it would stop by reinstalling, I did that a while back. Thank you so much.

Thanks for the update, and pleased to hear that fixed it.

TheDevinBro wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 09, 2021 4:34 am

I was able to delete those files and it works now!!! I thought it would stop by reinstalling,

Like many other apps, Audacity retains it's settings even when reinstalled so that you can update the program without losing your preference settings. However, that means that if there's a problem in the settings, reinstalling will NOT fix it - you have to reset the preferences.

Audacity now includes an option in the "Tools" menu to "Reset Configuration". This resets "most" of Audacity settings back to default, safe values.
Manually deleting those three files resets everything.

(Closing this topic so that the fix is easy for others to find)