Vista Issues

[azura84]

It's a clean install, apon installing I thought it would be a clever idea to 'update' windows soon as I had all my drivers installed and ready to go. Some reason Windows doesn't like updating itself. It would attempt to update itself, but apon restarting and finalizing the update it would fail and either get stuck in an infinate loop of trying to restart-update.

SO, my genious idea was to do nothing, let windows run as it came. This also came with downsides (i hate microsoft).

*The concept of 64 bit processing, I've always read, has been to increase the abilities of multiple processes, my computer doesnt seem to grasp this. In fact my old setup using Windows XP Pro 32bit, ran many programs much more efficiently. Yes, I did upgrade my hardware accordingly to adjust for Vista hording, hence the updated signature also.

*My biggest concern however has been Windows Vista (not my graphics driver) failure to cooperate with my graphics cards. In the middle of a simple game like Final Fantasy XI (MMO) the game would suddenly crash, screen black, then windows would return and tell me my graphics driver was faulty and that it 'recovered itself'...... right.... well I thought maybe I should update my graphics drivers as windows suggested. Low and behold nothing. Even after rollback, uninstall, reinstall, update, and a series of different install processes between the graphics drivers and directX, it STILL would cause crashes. FFXI is NOT a heavy graphics game by any means, dare I wonder what will happen when I try to install CoD:4. Mind you my graphics card at this time is a Nvidia 8800 GTS, by no means outdated but at the same time I wanted an upgrade anyways. So I now have (what is currently in my sig) an ATI Radeon HD 4850 hopeing perhaps that windows would like my new card more. Nada, still fails in the exact same way. The complete change in brand AND generation of my graphics card + drivers leads me to believe windows is to blame.

I've read many different forum posts and such about lots of different types of driver failures relating to windows vista. Is there a fix for any of this? Complex or simple, please help.

Thank you, Kyle.

 

[bsobel]

*My biggest concern however has been Windows Vista (not my graphics driver) failure to cooperate with my graphics cards. In the middle of a simple game like Final Fantasy XI (MMO) the game would suddenly crash, screen black, then windows would return and tell me my graphics driver was faulty and that it 'recovered itself'...... right.... well I thought

Sounds like you want us to tell you this is normal and this is MS's problem when you clearly have a buggy video driver or bad hardware. Fix it.

 

[azura84]

If you'd read the whole post before replying you'd see that I've done what you said already, not only once but several times and with two completely different graphics cards. Still recieving the same errors.

Nor am I making the mistake of using 32 bit drivers, I use 64 bit OS, I use 64 bit drivers.

 

[EndGame]

You've got problems no doubt.........but I doubt it's a "Vista" problem. Memory?

 

[azura84]

the memory is brand new, there's a chance one of the 4 sticks could be bad, but i dont see how it could cause a graphics failure and then windows telling me it's drivers.

If it was the blue screen of death i'd certainly agree, this could be worth checking though I'll try pulling single sticks out tonight one at a time and see how it does.

 

[Trashman]

thats what i was thinking as well....memory, try removing 2 sticks.

 

[EndGame]

Add all the problems you've had up.........can't say 100% for sure but, sounds like memory could be the culprit. Is it at the right voltage? Is it overclocked? Is it on the QVL list for your board?

 

[EndGame]

Exactly what I was just going to add..........just reread and saw that you were/are running all four dimms.........Phenom 1's didn't particularly like that........ran into that problem on a few systems I worked on.

 

[Trashman]

some boards are finicky running 4 sticks.

 

[azura84]

Good question, I have used any of the voltage settings but I recall going to reseting the bios to default once or twice already, so whatever the default is shouldnt be pushing my memory too hard.

G.Skill is nice but nobody's perfect, I'll try pulling some sticks and playing with it some tonight.

Thanks for the advice, any advice for the windows updates or do you think they could be one in the same problem involving the memory?

 

[Trashman]

I'd also do some searching for a driver cleanup program, can't recall name of utility, since you have Nvidia drivers and now ATI drivers, that may help getting rid of old drivers.

 

[azura84]

cool beanz~

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: azura84
If you'd read the whole post before replying you'd see that I've done what you said already, not only once but several times and with two completely different graphics cards. Still recieving the same errors.

You still have a hardware or driver issue, it's not Vista. Sitting and bashing MS isn't going to make it Vista's fault.

Nor am I making the mistake of using 32 bit drivers, I use 64 bit OS, I use 64 bit drivers.

No kidding, they wouldnt even install :roll:

 

[azura84]

I like to bash MS though, lol.

and considering if you do a google search for driver failure now and the top 50 are all vista or windows related, i have to say it was easy to draw that conclusion. besides even though i have graphics problems many others have audio driver failures that do the same thing, quit and then start working again magicly.

 

[EndGame]

Originally posted by: azura84
I like to bash MS though, lol.

and considering if you do a google search for driver failure now and the top 50 are all vista or windows related, i have to say it was easy to draw that conclusion. besides even though i have graphics problems many others have audio driver failures that do the same thing, quit and then start working again magicly.

And you also have to consider that the ONLY people you will see in there bashing and complaining are people with problems. Thing is, most of them are most often hardware problems, driver problems or just plain user error........

 

[KeypoX]

i was getting video card crash and recover. When I had 4 dimms in...

Also i could not par check files after a while. It sucked because memtest had no errors after 4 passes. Dunno if it was vista or motherboard or ram or video or whatever.

But I sold 4x1gb on ebay for like $45and bought 2x2gb for < price after rebate.

MS isnt perfect but its the best there is...


I see you are having the crash with both cards, your post is really hard to read, i bet its the 4 sticks. i had the error on two cards too!

 

[azura84]

I see you are having the crash with both cards, your post is really hard to read, i bet its the 4 sticks. i had the error on two cards too!

It seems the consensious is memory, I hope it's this simple. I wish things would work the way they claim to though, 8gigs would be nice. oh well, we'll see.

Yea i wrote a lot out, because it seem when I dont I get a lot of people asking for more info.

MS isnt perfect but its the best there is...

I disagree, Mac and Linux are far less bugy but sadly Microsoft was more convincing in the birth of PCs.
Granted you can't personalize Macs nearly as much, but they're solid machines.

Also this thread may need to be moved to Software for Windows instead of Operating Systems.

 

[soonerproud]

Originally posted by: azura84
I disagree, Mac and Linux are far less bugy but sadly Microsoft was more convincing in the birth of PCs.
Granted you can't personalize Macs nearly as much, but they're solid machines.

As a long time Linux user I can tell you first hand that Linux is just as buggy, and sometimes even more buggy due to half baked drivers. OSX seems (the key word is seems) more stable because the hardware and software are controlled tightly by Apple. Microsoft won the PC wars because they embraced the open hardware model, unlike Apple which wanted to tightly control both the hardware and software.

You already admitted your bias against Microsoft and that you love to bash them any chance you get. Maybe in the future when you have an issue you could just try for once to abstain from the temptation to bash Microsoft because quite frankly many of us will refuse to answer the post of a obvious basher. People here on this board (Including many nix and OSX users!) are tired of the mindless and uninformed bashing of Microsoft.

 

[azura84]

I'll try to remember that in the future. Thanks for the help guys.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: azura84
I'll try to remember that in the future. Thanks for the help guys.

One tip I can give you for gaming is update your Vista or XP to latest DX9.0c version which at this time is March 2009 from here or here.