Record button does not work

I use 4.7, with Jack and Cadence to manage routing amongst softwares.
the sound is coming into audio1 channels, the mixer responds. Arm the track and the ardour, red light flashing, then click play then no region is created. it simply plays what is on tracks, as a play button would normally do. Strange thing is that it was working fine til a few days ago, I do not remember making any alterations to settings, it just simply stopped recording. Does anyone has any clue why the button might not be responding at all ? thanks in advance

Are you engaging the global record-enable button also?

yes, the one in the main transport at the top of the interface. that’s engaged, flashing. If I press play to (in theory) start recording, the input cuts off and just plays. I installed different version of ardour to give a try, and even reinstalled 4.7 again to try, the issue persists however. Any thoughts? I do not suppose this is a problem outside ardour, as the program is receiving input signals.

Does this happen with a brand new session you create in your home folder?

    Seablade

thanks for the reply yes it happens to all sessions old or new

Please take a screenshot and post a link to it here. Actually take 2: one before you hit play, one after you hit play.

thanks
here they are
Before:

After :

It looks like you have ‘punch in’ and ‘punch out’ clicked but no range selected.

Apology Gents, unclicking the punch in and out buttons on the top right box did the trick, I suspected it is something either so simple or obvious I have been missing for two days but I am a bit surprised that the selection of punch in/out carries over across different present/past sessions. Consider this case closed and I appreciate your help very much.
thank you