Speech Recognition -Text to Speech

[Claudia]

Hello,

 

I installed a program called Natural Reader, which plays back text using various voices so that you can hear what is on the page rather than just reading it. I just bought the program and I cannot get the voices to work. I emailed the company and they told me to go to Control Panel/Speech Recognition and fix it on my computer because it is a computer problem.

So when I click on the Speech Recognition and then Text to Speech (I have Windows 8 by the way) --and I click on the "Preview Voice" button, it does not play the text at all like it is supposed to do. If I click on the Audio Output button, Speech/Headphones is checked. But I do notice there are two items below that which say NVIDIA and both say that they are 'not plugged in'.

And when I click on the Advanced button, 'Use preferred audio output device is' ticked. And 'Speakers/Headphones DT High Definition' is the only thing available.

I am not very technically capable at all, I just know the minimum about computers. Can anyone help me with this please? If I can't get this working then I will have just wasted my money.

Like I said, I don't know much at all about computers but I will add this part, just in case it might have something to do with it. I noticed that this red icon keeps showing up next to my videos and things like that in my folders. Its something that was not there before. When I look in my windows apps it says it X Box. I also noticed that when I open all my apps to show, the red X Box icon has one of my little videos there instead of the app red icon, which is weird, I think? Note sure on that. I installed windows classic shell anyway, so I don't have to look at all those apps tiles all the time on my desktop with windows 8 because I find it annoying. So I really don't know much about apps anyway. But its just that I recently did a full system restore on my computer and that wasn't there before, at least it wasn't associated with my videos. So I am wondering if this has anything to do with the voice thing not working in speech recognition? Like maybe I have the wrong thing associated with sound or something? I also notice on my desktop there is an icon called "Connected Music powered by Universal Music Group" and when I clicked on it, nothing happened.
I don't know if any of these things have anything to do with the Speech recognition not playing back, but I figured I'd mention all of it just in case.

Can anyone help please? I just want my Natural Reader program to play the voices.
Thanks, Claudia