Totally useless on a brand new Windows 10 laptop

[steve]

I don't think it is "a Windows 10 issue" as there are in excess of 10 million Audacity users on Windows 10 that don't have this problem.

I also had other people try it on other Windows 10 computers and they all crashed the same way.

That's interesting. What is the common factor there other than Windows 10?

[Michael Kazmierski]

Unfortunately, I have no idea

[kozikowski]

What is the common factor there other than Windows 10?

Are the other people with this problem all part of the same university system?

having just gotten reformatted after my dad took it home from the store.

You reformatted your just-out-of-the-box Windows 10 machine?

Why would you want that?

Koz

[Michael Kazmierski]

Well, thing is, the laptop wasn't working at all when my Dad bought it from the store. So he reformatted it, and everything I've done from that point onwards was after that reformatting. Hope that makes more sense.
I'm pretty sure they all had different brands of laptops when they witnessed Audacity crashing, but Windows 10 never grants the default user administrator rights which I think absolutely sucks. Maybe that's why it crashes, who knows. However, when I try to run Audacity as an administrator, it crashes as well.

[steve]

The most common cause for Audacity crashing is if there are problems with the sound card drivers. Windows 10 is particularly fussy about having the correct drivers. There's a page in the manual about updating the sound card drivers: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Updat ... ce_Drivers

Note that just because basic playback works in an audio player does not mean that the drivers are OK. Audacity is a multi-track recording and editing application, so it is much more demanding of the computer sound system than a simple media player. The drivers must be the correct ones for the hardware (which usually means downloading them from the laptop manufacturer's website), and must be for the version of Windows 10 that is installed (32-bit or 64-bit).

Also, if you have 64-bit Windows 10, then you really need to get more RAM. 2 GB is the absolute minimum for 64-bit Windows 10 to run at all, let alone do any productive work.

[Michael Kazmierski]

Well, I've also heard that if you are using Jaws 17 or earlier, for some reason Jaws will cause Audacity to crash. At least on Windows 10. Upgrading to Jaws 18 for some reason will fix it according to what I've heard. I'm pretty sure my sound drivers are ok.