So I installed audacity on my laptop today and it loaded up with no issue. But as soon as I changed the mic input, it crashed. After that, audacity crashes on startup. No biggy, I’ll install it on my 2nd computer. I noticed that my rainmeter app crashed but ignored it thinking it was some bug. After restarting my laptop, everything seems to be crashing. No audios are playing, youtube videos won’t play and my google chrome plugins are constantly crashing now. I tried reinstalling adobe shockwave and updating my graphics card but to no avai. I honestly have no idea what is going on. I can’t find a solution as well because adobe shockwave keeps crashing. I don’t understand, everything was fine before installing audacity.
My guess is that it is a sound card driver problem.
Let’s take this one step at a time and see if we can isolate the problem.
Did you install Audacity with the recommended "Audacity 2.1.1 installer " from here: http://web.audacityteam.org/download/windows
If so, run the installer again and look for the option to “Reset Preferences”. When that option appears, select it. When the installation is complete, launch Audacity and confirm that you wish to reset preferences when prompted.
Do not change any settings just yet.
Does Audacity launch?
If so, select “Help > Audio device info” and copy the full contents of the info window into your reply.
If you’re on Windows 10, reinstall your audio drivers.
There’s been a Windows update in the last couple of days that contains a bug. I don’t know yet which update. It seems to provoke various applications not starting, or crashing. Even applications that don’t use audio, like Thunderbird or even Solitaire are affected.
Reinstalling audio drivers seems to fix it every time…
Thanks for the quick reply steve and cyrano! @Steve I tried reinstalling audacity but it still crashed. @Cyrano That might be the problem since I am running windows 10 as well.
In the end, I fixed it by doing a system restore to a previous restore point. Audio is working fine now and youtube videos are playing. I was getting kinda desperate as I had work to do and had no solutions to fixing it.
Weird too, as it affected applications that have nothing to do with it. Even after uninstalling audacity, the issues still stayed.
But thanks for the quick responses! hopefully someone else will find this thread useful if they encounter the same thing.