I need some help!

I'm noobie to Reaper and can't figure out some stuff. Here's what's going on. I start a new project, insert a media file, it plays fine through my headphone. I start another track and play my guitar through my tascam US-122L audio interface and can still hear both media file and guitar. When I load an effects while the media file is playing I can still hear the guitar but get no effects. Just the clean sound. Why can't I hear the affects? When I'm playing just the guitar I can use effects with no problem. My second problem is when I have a media file (backtracking) playing and load another track and playing the guitar with a clean sound (because effects won't work because I have a media file playing)(see first question) when I hit record to record media file and the guitar the media file sound goes away. I have tracks armed. I have done everything I can think of to get it to work like I think it's suppose to??? Anybody got any idea's I can try? My setup is windows XP on a laptop, 1.8ghz CPU, 1gb ram. tascam US-122L interface. I have tried the asio4all driver, did not make a difference. I have been building/troubleshooting hardware/ software on computers for 22 years. Have never been stumped like this before. Thanks for your help in advance!

What FX are you trying to use on your guitar ? How many tracks are you working with ? "when I hit record to record media file and the guitar the media file sound goes away. I have tracks armed." Are'nt you trying to record OVER the media file this way ? By having all tracks armed. That would be why it goes away. When you say record a media file, why not drag and drop it or insert media instead...? Not clear exactly what you are trying to do.

Yes, it sounds like you're arming the backing track unnecessarily. To record the guitar, arm just the guitar track. To make one file with the recorded guitar plus the backing track, the easy way is to render the mix; File > Render If there are still problems with the effects, please tell us what effects you're using, on what tracks, with some detail about how you're going about setting them up.

Thanks for the replies! With you guy's help I believe I've got it figured out. I think my problem was I was arming both tracks before hitting record?? The effects is working also. Don't know what I was doing wrong there?? But everything is working correctly and I did take notes on every single step. That way if something goes wrong I'll have my notes to go back to. Thanks again for the help!

Backing track quality 

Hi Guys. I'm a new reaper user, and also new here in the forum. I've been read a lot of thread, but couldn't find any solution. So, here's my problem: When put the backing track in reaper, sound quality is just horrible, and even without backing track, if I just playing my guitar sound also horrible. I'm using Amplitube, and(or) Line 6 POD farm, but no defference, quality is very low, noisy and scrunchy. I believe it's only some settings problem, but I can't figured out what. I'm using Line 6 UX1, and amplitube and pod farm works fine, in standalone mod. Any idea?