Audacity refuses to record

Recently, Audacity has been apparently opening normally, but when the Record button is pressed, the Device toolbar is tgreyed out and no running line is displayed on the sonogram. Rebooting the computer corrects this fault.

Details:

Windows 10, Home edition, 64 bit
Intel 3.40 GHz processor, 16GB RAM

Audacity version 3.0.0 - downloaded from Audacity home page

No error message is displayed; there is room for over 1800 hours of recording on hard disc.

Audacity is running on the D: drive, although it’s apparently storing some files on the C: drive.

I’ve attached two Audacity logs; one, ending in 836, is the log from a frozen installation; the other, ending in 703, from a working installation, following a reboot.

Peter Why
mididev.txt (557 Bytes)
log.txt (2.5 KB)
audiodev.txt (5.91 KB)
audacity.cfg (8.91 KB)

I suspect that the problem is that some other app has grabbed control of the audio system and is effectively locking Audacity out from using it.
(Apps like Skype / Zoom and similar are known offenders in this respect.)

Thanks for the suggestion; how can I determine whether this is true?

Peter

Do you use Zoom or Skype or similar?

I have used Zoom, but it doesn’t load on startup, and doesn’t seem to be active when I’ve checked with ctrl-alt-del.

The error only started within the past week, and doesn’t happen every time (Audacity recorded without trouble this morning), so I think I’ll just have to put up with it.

Thank you for trying to help.

Peter

Audacity is running on the D: drive

Where is the D: drive? Is it a network or cloud drive? Audacity doesn’t like that very much and can give erratic performance.

I have several machines with C: and D: drives and in all cases, the two drives are inside the computer cabinet and match for size and manufacturer.

Koz

Hmmm… Didn’t see these…

I did try to upload the two zips by dragging them into the message box, but they seem to have unzipped themselves on uploading, and the second set of files may have overwritten the first. I’ll try again, uploading separately in two messages in this thread.
Peter

Here’s the log files from a frozen Audacity instance.
Peter
Audacity_dbgrpt-6132-20210803T150418.zip (11.5 KB)

… and here’s the log from the instance of Audacity that is recording normally, after a reboot.
Peter
Audacity_dbgrpt-2860-20210803T151703.zip (12.4 KB)

The “frozen” audiodev.txt file, contains the text, “Stream is active … unable to gather information”.

This could happen. for example. if you have two projects open in Audacity and you are trying to record or play in both of them simultaneously.

Sorry, but Audacity will not let you do this.

Thanks for checking the logs for me. I’ve not tried to do that deliberately, and occasionally the freeeze has happened when first opening Audacity.

The problem hasn’t recurred over the past day or so; it may have cleared itself.

Peter