What the heck is wrong!!! Only days ago, I was using my normal, everyday USB mic, everyday desktop computer, and everyday Music Creator 3 to record audio.
But now, every time I click record, it WILL begin recording; however, as soon as I click record again (to stop recording, of course), it removes what ever I just recorded.
I'm thinking about making a fresh install the first step, but I don't know what to do short of that/what to do alternatively.
Anybody ever experience that? Is this a unique problem, But moreover, is there a fix??

First thing to exclude is a simple human error done by so many:
When you have armed the track, be sure you press R to record, not Play. There have been numerous cases when a person has watched the waveform preview of an armed track without actually recording anything.

Otherwise, the problem sounds very strange. I doubt if a fresh install would do any good. USB mics are known troublemakers, but that problem doesn't seem like one caused by it.

Do the actual clips disappear or are you left with clips with flat line? Have you auditioned that nothing really isn't recorded? If you're left with flat lines, delete the contents of your Picture Cache folder, so MC can produce new waveform pictures.

Any time people say that they are using a USB mic with Cakewalk products....... I suspect the mic first and foremost as the source of problems. 

Although I could be wrong.... 

Something has obviously been changed. Double check the signal path routing.  If all that is good.....restart the computer.... try again..... beyond that.... IDK much about USB mics other than they are problematic. 

The better option is to use a dedicated musical interface and a normal mic. 

Hey, guys. Thanks to both for the replies. Kalle's *kinda* ended up oworking for me; I went to the Picture Cache folder, but only deleted one file from an old project I didn't plan to work on anymore. All of a sudden, the whole things works.

However, I have a different problem (ish-thingy); Cakewalk was being outright ridiculous, so I decided to shift my Buffers size and buffers in playback queue.

But I'm wondering how I can determine what are the best settings for my sound card, RAM, and motherboard?

-Realtek HD Audio (Generic)
-AMD Phenom Quad-Core 9650
-7gb RAM

It looked beefy, but it's really a softy when it comes to any kind of media. I plan on getting a personal computer soon, as I work on a family-owned one, not to mentionn upgrading to the latest MC.

There are really no "best for everyone" settings since everyone's computer has different stuff on it; hardware, software, peripherals, etc.
Theoretically, clicking the Wave Profiler button will let your Cakewalk program 'see' what audio devices you have and set itself to the best it thinks the hardware can handle, but there may need to be some additional tweaking to do even after that. Trial and error kind of thing.

The settings for your soundcard are problematic, because you are using the USB mic, which is a soundcard itself. Also, the integrated Realtek simply isn't capable of fluent DAW work. So, you have two not-recommendable soundcards, which you can not use simultaneously due to clocking discrepancies.

To get to "clear waters" and have systems and software work the way they are designed to work you'd need a decent USB soundcard and a normal dynamic or condenser microphone.

How about your memory? AFAIK it should not be possible to have 7 gigas of RAM, as RAM should be installed as pairs os similar memory combs. If that 7 Gb is correct, that could be one source of problems as well.

Totally possible, at least with 3 RAM slots. 1gb + 2gb + 4gb
Didn't know the amount of RAM could be problematic...
Also, no matter how much I ask, study, and learn, I just cannot grasp the USB vs. PCI debate on sound cards, or most things about sound cards in general.
Like you said, since a sound device is itself a sound card, does it really matter which of the two I choose? And what qualifies as a USB sound card, would they be like USB audio interfaces?

For some reason..... I was thinking that ALL the RAM cards needed to ALL be the same size and have specs that are compatible with the requirements of the machine.  In other words... mixing and matching don't work as far as I know..... but I don't know it all when it comes to computers.

Like you said, since a sound device is itself a sound card, does it really matter which of the two I choose? And what qualifies as a USB sound card, would they be like USB audio interfaces?

 
With MC, a 32-bit program, you won't be able to utilize more than about 4 GB anyway regardless of whether the operating system is 64-bit.
Using a USB mic to record and the stock sound card to monitor means that you are using 2 different sound devices, each with their own clocks and they cannot be synchronized. This leads to all sorts of problems, especially as more tracks are recorded. Each succesive track will get more out-of-time with the previous tracks.
Plus, USB mics almost always have to use the MME driver mode, the oldest, slowest mode available. That means tons of latency and less efficient processing of the audio data.

Aw, man, I am in a bad position. It's really looking to be time to upgrade everything...
For a USB sound card, would anyone suggest the M-Audio Fast Track (The smallest one around $150)? It would really be a starter for me, so I don't want to go blow the bank before I learn the basics.
[EDIT] It's been revealed that I'll be getting Music Creator 6 very soon, so I can finally knock some problems away. :)
Also,  I forgot to mention - This mic isn't straight-USB; it has an audio jack that connects into a small conversion box. I've tried it through the audio jack, and it doesn't really work at all, so I pretty much only use it through the USB converter.
(For those wondering, it's a mic from the xBox game, Singstar. Pretty lo-budget, indeed.)