No sound in Audacity again (never mind, OS crashed, sound returned on reboot)

[Governor]

Audacity crashed twice now and has no sound. I think I tried every setting. I have sound in Firefox, but not in videos played from my harddrive.
Audacity did not crash in the usual way, it just vanished in an instant.
This is bad. I really really really hope I don't have to go through the nightmare of rebooting the computer.
Thanks!

[bigpup]

All the issues you keep posting, to me seem to be one big issue, you have not seemed to fix.

You have an unstable computer.

You need to figure out exactly what is unstable in the computer hardware and fix that.

you keep posting about issues with running programs, booting the computer, reading from drives, messed up installs , etc.....

It is time to fix the hardware.

A lot of your posts seem to indicate you have a drive that is going bad or has a corrupted file system on it.

To check the drive for corrupted file system and maybe fix it.

Boot the computer with a Puppy version on usb stick or CD and do not use a save, to make sure you are not using stuff on a drive, you want to check.
This will keep any drives you need to check not mounted.

Run Gparted program with it looking at a drive you want to check.
Whatever partitions Gparted shows on the drive.
Check each partition by right clicking on it and selecting check.

See what it finds and if any errors, what it fixes.

Do this until the check reports no errors found.

Now see if access of stuff on this drive will work correctly.
If a Puppy install is on the drive.
See if it boots and runs OK.

If the drive is still having issues.

If drive connections to the computer seem OK and it generally seems to somewhat work.

You can try to transfer stuff you want to keep off of the drive, but what you get may not be good.

Only next option is to do a complete delete everything from the drive and start over fresh.

Use Gparted to make a new partition table on the drive. Type msdos.
This will delete everything.

Then make partitions and format them as you like.

Start using the drive for whatever you want to.

If it still has issues.

It is probably a drive that is just failing and it will never work 100%

Time to get a new drive to replace it.

[Governor]

All the issues you keep posting, to me seem to be one big issue, you have not seemed to fix.

You have an unstable computer.

You need to figure out exactly what is unstable in the computer hardware and fix that.
8< ------------snipped

Only next option is to do a complete delete everything from the drive and start over fresh.

Use Gparted to make a new partition table on the drive. Type msdos.
This will delete everything.

Then make partitions and format them as you like.

Start using the drive for whatever you want to.

If it still has issues.

It is probably a drive that is just failing and it will never work 100%

Time to get a new drive to replace it.

I have done this procedure 2 times. If there is a hardware problem, it has not been identified. And if there is a hardware problem, it could be something on the motherboard or associated components.

A new computer costs around $1,000 (the same as it cost in the 1990s). We are living in tough times, but I plan to get a new one as soon as I can.
The stationary computers I see advertised are lousy compared to the laptops. I remember when it was the reverse.

Thanks!