Recording with Windows 10/11 and DCart

Windows Recording Problems #

Many people initially have some difficulties recording with Windows 10/11. This article describes some of the most common causes and fixes for this issue.

Most problems with recording on Windows are because of the way Windows deals with recording audio. Windows will default to have all recording devices disabled. Not very convenient or user friendly in my opinion. The solution is to re-enable the audio input or simply plug something into the audio in jack on your PC.

These settings are mostly outside of Dcart/DCForensics but lets step thru the possible causes.

Firstly, check what recording device is selected in DCart.

1)      Go to the Sound Card screen and see what recording device is selected. (Menu – Preferences->Sound Card tab)

You can see on my system, I have enabled the “Stereo Mix” as the recording input. This allows me to record what is coming out of the sound card, such as video or audio playback from the web or a music app. This is useful for capturing audio from existing sources but is not an audio input from an external source like Line In or Mic Input.

A new “Feature” in Windows is that it will not show you the external Line In option unless there is something plugged into the line input plug on your computer. This is NOT a useful feature in my opinion.

2)      To enable Windows Recording devices,

• In the Search bar in Windows type “Sound Settings”, you should see “Sound Settings / System Settings” as a choice.
• Select that option and you should see this:

• Half way down is the “Input” section. You can see here that it says “No input devices found”. This is because Windows tends to disable inputs whenever it feels like it. I cannot find any rhyme or reason why selections get disables, but I have had to come back to this screen often when I want to record audio.
• How to fix this?
  • Waaay at the bottom, under “Advanced”, you can see a selection for “More sound settings”, Click on that and you should the the old style setting box pop up like this:

• It defaults to the Playback tab. Which may have different choices on your PC.
• Select the “Recording” Tab and you should see something like this:

• You need to select one of the options and then use the Properties button to enable this device. In the case of the Jack Mic, you will need to plug something into the jack to see it appear in the list of recording devices.
• Click OK to save your choices and close the Sound System settings.

Close and restart DCart and go back to the Sound Card Setting tab in the control panel and you should now see a selection for the recording device you have enabled.