Dragon won't start and gives error message
I recently helped set up a user with a roaming user over his network. He had created a user file on his desktop and after enabling roaming, it set up a master user on the server.
Since then, he has had the following error when starting Dragon (V8 Professional):-
"The speech engine was unable to turn on the microphone or audio input".
Has anyone had this? If so, do you know the cause and solution?
This could be due to setting up roaming but somehow I don't think it is.
I did pull out the USB microphone from the USB port at one stage to set up a roaming on his laptop. Maybe, when I plugged it back in, I put it into a different USB port and perhaps it's to do with that. On the other hand, I thought Dragon worked with a USB microphone worked irrespective of which USB port you choose to use!
I did a search in the Nuance Knowledge Base but it didn't help me much. It says:-
Error: "The speech engine was unable to turn on the microphone or audio input device"
Products: Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8
Information:
When dictating or initializing the microphone, an error may appear stating "The speech engine was unable to turn on the microphone or audio input device". To remedy this issue, we recommend restarting Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
If this continues to occur, we recommend testing the microphone in Sound Recorder.
Nuance tech support said - Please create a new user choosing USB microphone in the audio setup alternatively you could run the audio settings again with the current user. Also make sure that your usb mic works correctly outside of Dragon.(You can try in the Window recorder
TechNote Number: 4847
Published: 10/18/2004
Last Modified: 10/18/2004
Peter Maddern, UK
I've gotten this with a
I've gotten this with a Andrea USB pod setup on DNS 7.3. In each case, simply stopping NatSpeak, unplugging the pod, waiting a few seconds, then re-plugging the pod and re-starting NatSpeak did the trick.
Every once in a while, my USB mouse, or printer, or sound pod loses its mind and has to be unplugged / plugged again. This is with Windows XP on an otherwise stable machine. It might be my old USB hub, or it may be Windows.
I don't have enough hours in the day to figure it out, so I pull plugs and put them back in again when needed. This is obviously not a solution for someone without the use of hands.
Dave
Update - I went back in to
Update - I went back in to the office of the person having the problem and sorted out the problem. The new roaming setup to the network didn't appear to be the culprit.
I found that audio and voice recording in Control panel Sounds and Audio Devices had somehow defaulted to the on - board sound card. I defaulted these back to the USB, made sure the default was sticking and after switching Dragon on and off a few times to make sure it would open without the error message, everything was fine.
Peter
Peter Maddern
http://www.speechempoweredcomputing.co.uk