Speech recognition was working fine until about a week ago. One day I was using the application and it worked OK. The next morning, when I booted the machine (Dell inspiron 1525), speech recognition stopped working. Now, every time I try to start speechh recognition, I get the same error. Here is what happens: 1. Start speech recognition. 2. The panel appears with the message "starting speech recognition" 3, A fraction of a second later - it switches to "sleeping" and then to "off" and the following error message appears: Speech Recognition Error Please restart Speech Recognition Speech Recognition encountered an error. Please restart Speech Recognition to ensure that you can continue to use Speech Recognition. Any clues anyone? Ken Evans

Hello Ken, are there any traces in Event logs? Have you install any updates in the meantime? Regards Milos

Hi Milos, Updates? My system autodownloads and installs dozens of updates every few days. I looked in the event logs. There was an error (sorry can't remember the name) but it led me to a diagnostic that suggested a hardware error. So to test the hardware, I replaced the installd 2.5" SSD hard drive (Win 7 Pro) with my physical backup drive (Win 7 Pro - not an SSD) and speech recognition works OK on the backup drive. Thus, whatever the cause of the problem, it is related to what is on the SSD. I also found that the "setup microphone wizard" would not run on the SSD but it works OK on my backup drive. The backup drive's version of Win 7 pro has not been updated for some time. I'm updating it now, but I have a slow internet link so it may take some hours. Ken Ken Evans

OK - I fixed it. The problem was appearing because the external USB hi-fi microphone that I am using was not set as the default microphone. I read this tutorial and then set my USB microphone to be the default. http://www.7tutorials.com/how-change-default-playback-recording-audio-device Ken Evans