Audacity will no longer open....

[TheLegendaryJaredLee]

This is the message that pops up every time I try to open Audacity.

"The system has detected that another copy of Audacity is running.
Running two copies of Audacity simultaneously may cause
data loss or cause your system to crash.

Use the New or Open commands in the currently running Audacity
process to open multiple projects simultaneously."

The problem is that Audacity is not running. I've tried several things that have been suggested through forums. First I looked into task manager to see if I could end the program, but it wasn't there. Second I tried to cleared all my preferences in Windows 7 on Audacity by opening the cfg file. That did not work, so then I tried doing this again. Removing my original Audacity program and downloading a new one. This did not work either. I don't know what to do, it seems that other people have had this problem but I have yet to find a forum where this issue has been solved, please help me....

[kozikowski]

This may be where history is important. Did you Install Win7 or did you "upgrade" to Win7? Did the original machine have Audacity 1.2 on it before you upgraded? Flesh this out. We need to taste and feel your machine since it's obviously confused.

Koz

[TheLegendaryJaredLee]

Unfortunately in this case, it's always been Windows 7 and Audacity 1.3

[steve]

Second I tried to cleared all my preferences in Windows 7 on Audacity by opening the cfg file

What exactly did you do there?
Were you able to find the audacity.cfg file?
What's in that file now?

If Audacity crashed on opening it may not have cleaned up its "lock file". Have a search for a file called "lock-file-username" where "username" is your Windows log-in username. On Windows I'm not sure where that file gets written to, but it may be ina temp folder: C:Users<your user name>AppDataLocalTemp
If a lock-file exists you will need to delete it to allow Audacity to open.

[TheLegendaryJaredLee]

So with the cfg file, I found a help forum that suggested to reset the preferences, I looked here http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... references and then I did as instructed on this so now the cfg file just says NewPrefsInitialized=1 . Now that being said, I searched for a lock file, but couldn't find one. I did a search and went where you had suggested but couldn't find a lock file to delete. The problem is that Audacity isn't even opening on the first attempt, but after you first try to open it, and nothing happens, then when you make a second attempt, it reacts as if the file is already running, which of course just drives me crazy because I know it is not running. Oh well, hopefully this can shed a little more light on the situation.

[steve]

Are you using a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows 7?

Have you tried running Audacity in compatibility mode (Vista SP2 or XP SP3)

Do you have any VST effects installed on your computer? (may be included in other audio software).

[TheLegendaryJaredLee]

I am using 32-bit Windows 7, I do not have any other audio software editing programs on my computer so as far as I know I do not have any VST effects for other programs on my computer. Finally when I run in compatibility mode (to my defense I'm not entirely sure how to do this, so I choose to run as administrator, I think this is the same thing, though I'm not entirely sure) the same thing occurs.

[TheLegendaryJaredLee]

Okay so i just figured out how to run it in compatibility mode, and it did indeed do the same thing. No initial reaction.

[steve]

I'm at a distinct disadvantage here as I don't use Windows 7. I'll see if I can find a knowledgeable Windows 7 user to come and have a look.....

[Gale Andrews]

On WIndows and Mac you should never see that "system has detected that another copy of Audacity is running" message, because opening another instance of Audacity should open an IPC path to the first instance to pass on the command and then quit the second instance. I would guess either this isn't working properly for some reason or there is a second child process in the way such as a scan for VST effects. This could be the case even if you are launching on an initialised .cfg so that Audacity should not be scanning for VSTs - occasionally the presence of a .dll belonging to another program will make Audacity scan, and the scan will hang and block Audacity launching. This isn't a repeatable problem but I know of one .dll that will sometimes do this.

I would suggest you look on the "Processes" tab of Task Manager rather than the "Applications" tab. See if there are one or more instances of "audacity.exe" you can kill. Right-click over "audacity.exe" and choose "End Process Tree". Or simply try rebooting the computer if you haven't done so yet.

If a rogue VST scan is responsible it may be possible to hold ALT and press TAB on the keyboard to task-switch to the progress dialogue. This might give you the name of the .dll that is causing the problem. If a VST scan is the problem you could try launching Audacity with this .cfg:

Code: Select all

NewPrefsInitialized=1
[VST]
Enable=0
GUI=0
Rescan=0

Gale