tracks still bleeding trying not to give up

Try unmuting it and see what happens. I'm not sure how it fits with the built-in sound.
I bumped my Track Bleed thread. Note that you need to select the various options that will show in the controls.
If this raises any flags for you let us know.

nope. It was already set for sound on sound.

greg - are you sure about that? I'm not at home and can't verify, but from the sound of it, I would think that sound on sound is what would be causing bleed, not preventing it. I would think that OVERWRITE would cause a track not to have the previous track played back alongside the newly recorded one.

horus - just try that and see what happens. also - try turning on the "layers", there's a little bitty icon at the far top righ of the track properties that looks kind of like this:
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except much smaller - click on that and it should open up your track to show all the layers of your recordings in that track. then you can delete or mute previous ones that you no longer want.

maybe that is the problem you're having - but maybe not.

I'm really not sure what else it might be at this point. there must be some setting somewhere that he's not got, but I simply can't think of anywhere else to point him.

The overwrite didn't work. I'm using MC3 and couldn't see the track layers icon. If I could find it this might be the best option so far. You said the upper right corner? Is it something that I have to turn on from somewhere in order to see? Where we are right now is I can record and not get track bleeding only when the speakers are hooked up to the PC. I run the instrument through the mixer which is hooked to the PC use the headphones to record. When I run the line out from the PC to the mixer so I can hear what's being played on cakewalk without listening to the speakers through the air =track bleed.

Horus,
If you have the mixer connected exactly as it is in the pic in the other thread, make sure the CD/TAPE TO MIX button is NOT punched down. This sends the signal back through the computer, justa as Greg described.
Punch ONLY the CD/TAPE TO CTRL button. If everything else is connected correctly, this won't cross the signal path to the computer input.

Remind us what your sound card is. The echo effect is latency. Go to 'options>audio'. What is the latency reading? See if you can move the latency slider more to the 'fast' side, although doing so may cause pops or other audio noise.
If the problem can't be solved with your current sound card and pc, connecting like I said will work.
Greg

Horus,
I have reconfigured my setup to duplicate what you have.
Look at your Windows Playback Volume control. If Line In is NOT muted I can hear the instrument I am recording, as well as the tracks that are playing. In Windows Recording control, Line in is selected. There is no latency, as you would get from having Input Echo turned on in MC.
That Input Monitor you mentioned may be a key. It appears that there may be subtle variations in how our sound cards are implemented, and that may be the problem. For this exercise, I am using my built-in Intel sound chip(it uses the AC97 protocol).
Let us know if this helps, or what you see that is different. I am beginning to think your sound chip is the culprit. Even though they show up as AC97, they are not all the same.

horus - do you have MC4? if not, then the layer icon isn't there. if you have MC4, then I'll post a picture of it when i get time maybe tonite.

Bump. Remember I have the same setup as RoberB picture. Also track bleeding is no longer the problem. Not being able to hear what I'm recording while recording is. Still trying:)