Vista stability; or lack thereof.

[John Kotches]

Ok, I'm getting a number of BSoDs on Vista 32-bit; and it's getting highly frustrated.

In addition; apps are crashing on a far too regular basis. I've got the latest available updates and automatic updates are enabled.

In the past; I've found that for some reason or another machines tend to stabilize a week or 10 days into the install; and that this will turn out to be the case.

Anyone have any suggestions for improving system stability. No OC is employed as an FYI And this laptop is capable of OC'ing.

Is this a place where 64-bit with protected spaces for various components would work better?

Cheers,

 

[StevenD]

Try this...its beta...but it might fix your issues.

Neowin.net - Vista Performance and Reliability Pack Unofficial Release

 

[John Kotches]

Steven:

Thanks... I'm doing a little research at this time...

 

[mike123abc]

64 vista is better if you have a device driver or a certain app that is going crazy and trying to write over everything, it will only be able to kill off itself.

Also under the control panel you can see the logs under problem reports and solutions. Also under admin tools you can see tons more logging.

Also under system, system protection, advanced you can turn on data execute protection (DEP). This helps ferret out problems before they write over your memory.

 

[8bitbytes]

Ok, I'm getting a number of BSoDs on Vista 32-bit; and it's getting highly frustrated.

In addition; apps are crashing on a far too regular basis. I've got the latest available updates and automatic updates are enabled.

In the past; I've found that for some reason or another machines tend to stabilize a week or 10 days into the install; and that this will turn out to be the case.

Anyone have any suggestions for improving system stability. No OC is employed as an FYI And this laptop is capable of OC'ing.

Is this a place where 64-bit with protected spaces for various components would work better?

Cheers,

What are your application and system event logs telling you? You can pinpoint the problem by analysing the errors and looking them up on eventid.net.

 

[John Kotches]

8bit:

Since I posted this; I've had 0 crashes; so I can't really say.

Cheers,

 

[Stargazer]

I heard that they were giving out XP for free for those that got Vista with their new computers. Has anybody else heard this as well and know how one can get the XP for free? I've had issues with Vista in that it is not compatable with some of the hardware and software that I use for my work among other things.

 

[Pepper]

These should help a bit. In beta now, supposedly scheduled for the next Patch Tuesday.

These updates resolve a number of individual issues which may be affecting some computers running Windows Vista. These issues have been reported by customers using the Error Reporting service, product support, or other means. Installing these updates will improve the performance and responsiveness for some scenarios and improves reliability of Windows Vista in a variety of scenarios.

938979 Vista Performance and Reliability Pack:
• Improves performance in resuming back to the desktop from the Photo and Windows Energy screensaver.
• Resolves an issue where some secured web pages using advanced security technologies may not get displayed in Internet Explorer on Windows Vista.
• Resolves an issue where a shared printer may not get installed if the printer is connected to a Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 system and User Access Control is disabled on the Vista client.
• Resolves an issue where creating AVI files on Vista may get corrupted.
• Improves the performance in calculating the ‘estimated time remaining’ when copying/moving large files.
• Improves performance in bringing up Login Screen after resuming from Hibernate.
• Resolves an issue where synchronization of offline files to a server can get corrupted.
• Resolves a compatibility issue with RAW images created by Canon EOS 1D/1DS Digital SLR Camera which can lead to data loss. This only affects RAW images created by these two specific camera models.
• Resolves an issue where a computer can lose its default Gateway address when resuming from sleep mode.
• Improves the performance when copying or moving entire directories containing large amounts of data or files.
• Improves the performance of Vista’s Memory Manager in specific customer scenarios and prevents some issues which may lead to memory corruption.

938194 Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack:
• Improved reliability and compatibility of Vista when used with newer graphics cards in several specific scenarios and configurations.
• Improved reliability when working with external displays on a laptop.
• Increased compatibility with many video drivers.
• Improved visual appearance of games with high intensity graphics.
• Improved quality of playback for HD-DVD and Blue-Ray disks on large monitors.
• Improved reliability for Internet Explorer when some third party toolbars are installed on Vista.
• Improved Vista reliability in networking configuration scenarios.
• Improved the reliability of Windows Calendar in Vista.
• Improved reliability of systems that were upgraded from XP to Vista.
• Increased compatibility with many printer drivers.
• Increased reliability and performance of Vista when entering sleep and resuming from sleep.

BETA Vista Performance, Compatibility and Reliability Pack - The Hotfix Share

 

[John Kotches]

Pepper:

I saw that; but haven't DL'd. I'll wait for the official release.

Best,

 

[Bijou Media]

Vista hasn't been real gamer friendly.

 

[Frank Jr.]

I heard that they were giving out XP for free for those that got Vista with their new computers. Has anybody else heard this as well and know how one can get the XP for free? I've had issues with Vista in that it is not compatable with some of the hardware and software that I use for my work among other things.

That would be great. I do not want to purchase a new computer if it forces Vista on me.

 

[Pepper]

Vista hasn't been real gamer friendly.

I can vouch for Doom3, Quake4, UT2004 and FarCry, they all work great on Vista64 if you feed it enough hardware (in my case a Core2Duo E4300, 4GB, nvidia 8600GTS) - UT2004's "Holy S**T" mode is incredible.

 

[Poke]

There is a hardware test program from Microsoft that will test your current systems hardware to see if it will run on Vista.

 

[8bitbytes]

The test program will also test all your software and drivers which is where the biggest problems are. There are several companies that ignored MS programming guidelines and wrote under the OS for their drivers and protected mode services. Vista won't tolerate that anymore. Consequently, some drivers and programs will choke. NVidia found that out.

 

[mike123abc]

Vista 64 completely locks out bad driver behavior. It makes it hard to get working drivers, since so many device drivers never were written to spec. But, it is nice and stable once you get a driver that is certified.

 

[Pepper]

The "performance and reliability" updates I mentioned earlier have been officially released.


Update for Windows Vista (KB938194)
32-bit http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...9d-c33d-48db-a7e3-62eef7c1f7c2&DisplayLang=en
64-bit Download details: Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB938194)
This is a reliability update. Install this update to improve the reliability of Windows Vista in certain scenarios.


Update for Windows Vista (KB938979)
32-bit Download details: Update for Windows Vista (KB938979)
64-bit Download details: Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB938979)
This is a performance update. Install this update to improve the performance of Windows Vista in certain scenarios.

 

[John Kotches]

I installed the updates before I went out for the evening. We'll see how this affects system stability...

Best,