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[Pete Porchos]

Thanks for your reply, Wax.

Although it's been a few days I haven't made any progress. I've been wondering whether an old sound card, for which I have the original drivers on disk, would do the trick. (I've found the driver disk, but can't lay my hands on the card at the moment). Or does it have to be a newish soundcard to work with Audacity?

Are the generic drivers supplied with Windows different from the ones supplied with the card as new?

I see the benefits of a USB card, in the fact that I wouldn't have to scrabble round the back of the machine, which is under my desk, every time I want to check a connection or something. On the other hand I am quite at ease swapping cards in and out of the machine.

Patience, methinks.

Pete

[waxcylinder]

Pete,

certainly worth a try with the other souncard that you've got (always better than shelling out hard-earned spondoolicks).

Even though you have the original drivers I would also search t'interweb to see if there are updated drivers available for that card.

WC

[Pete Porchos]

Hi there wax,

Thanks for your help. I have looked reasonably hard for updated drivers. Nothing at the most popular places, driverguide etc. And I think I have looked before.

And I can't find the sound card that I have the drivers for! It's never ending. haha

But today I have advanced in another way. Got myself a new machine. Well, not new, pre-owned. Don't like shelling out too much and for ten quid I got a 45GB hard drive, 1.5Ghz processor, 490MB RAM. And a virus-riddled XP home install. Cleaned all that up, got it connected to my router, downloaded SP 2 and almost a hundred XP updates. And am away, in a sense.

Installed Audacity. And there is the missing dialogue box. Woohoo. Only problem is now the sound is echoey!!!!!!! It's an onboard soundcard. Expect I shall have to disable that to enable me to install a PCI soundcard. Not sure how to do that, not sure at all. Never-ending. Never-ending.

Pete

[Pete Porchos]

Well just to report that things are going well. I disabled the onboard sound in the BIOS and then disabled the card in Device manager. And all is fine. I think the echo was caused by the auto-selection of Microsoft Sound mapper.

I found that I actually had two identical sound cards, one onboard and one in an expansion slot. Odd. Listed in Device Manager as the same, anyway. Not easy to find which one was which.

However, the original problem persists. There is little point in solving it now, though, as I have an alternative.

Pete