Dropout when recording a second track

Using Audacity 3.2.0
Windows 10 Home.
Recording Device: M-Audio M-Track8 through lines 1 & 2
Playback: Through laptop’s sound card, Realtek

My recording is dropping out with the message …

Recorded audio was lost at the labeled locations. Possible causes:

  1. Other application are competing with Audacity for processing time.
  2. You are saving directly to a slow external storage device.

Audacity is the only application I have open and files are being saved to my hard drive on my laptop.

I had the same experience in 2018. See attachment for the response on your end. I don’t remember if what was suggested back then worked. But increasing the CPU priority this time did not work.

Any suggestions?
Screenshot 2022-10-05 131149.jpg

You could try minimizing the number of pixels on your screen and the frequency they need to be refreshed, for example, by re-sizing your Audacity screen.

I’m not sure where I would need to go or what I would access to do this. But will this not reduce the size of my screen? If it does, I have to believe there is another answer.

So this is just Windows 101. If the Audacity Window is not maximized, then drag the lower right-hand corner to make it smaller. If it already maximized, then Alt-Space, Restore first. Here is a video on how this works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AS_4bHLU2I

Yes. Painting those little tiny pixels can potentially consume a lot of CPU power. The whole idea is to regain CPU power for your audio.

OK, please share when you find it.