Learn English – Why is there -ing object after tried

The verb start takes complement clauses with either the marked infinitive or -ing forms, and there is no consistent difference in meaning between the two.

Consequently, both of your examples are grammatical. However, the version with the infinitive will usually be better, as it avoids using two -ing forms close to each other. This preference is generally acknowledged in contemporary linguistics and goes by the name horror aequi principle, a Latin phrase meaning, literally “aversion to the same thing”:

The horror aequi principle involves the widespread (and presumably universal) tendency to avoid the repetition of identical and adjacent grammatical elements and structures. —Gunter Rohdenburg, “Cognitive complexity and horror aequi as factors determining the use of interrogative clause linkers in English”, in Rohdenburg and B. Mondorf, Determinants of Grammatical Variation in English, 2003.

Another article in the same volume, U.Vosberg, “The Role of extractions and horror aequi in the evolution of -ing complements in Modern English”, states that

In many languages, we observe a strong aversion to the (immediate) co-occurrence of identical or similar grammatical structures. Thus, the establishment of -ing complements has been significantly delayed after matrix verbs appearing in the shape of -ing forms themselves. Such contexts tend to favour either the to-infinitive as verb complement or other alternatives (like nominal objects or finite clauses).

Both forms are accepted, although if you're still learning, and didn't make it a habit, the '-ing' form is less ambiguous.

The problem is that the 'verb to verb' in some contexts may mean two different things.

I stopped smoking

It means unambiguously that I don't smoke (cigarettes or whatever) any more.

I was raking dry leaves all morning, and while doing it, I came to a life-changing decision. I stopped to smoke, and decided to quit my current job and take up a hobby.

And here we don't know: was the decision to stop smoking? Or - conversely - he stopped raking leaves, in order to smoke a cigarette, and then, while smoking, came up with the remaining decisions.

In other words, the negatives - 'stop', 'pause', 'cease', etc connected with 'to verb' may relate either to stopping/pausing/etc that specific activity, or pausing a previous activity, in order to start the given activity!

The '-ing' bears no such ambiguity and is equally valid as a grammar construct, so if you have no specific reasons for writing otherwise, '-ing' is safer.