Vista locks up

[wit tier]

Hi,

I have recently tried installing Vista Ultimate 32 bit on my PC. I liked it, but came across a problem where every now and again the PC would just lock up and the only thing I could do was press the reset button. I wondered if it might be my usb ports so unplugged all my usb devices and put my mouse and keyboard on ps2 adapters. Still had the same problem.

My system configuration is as follows. Crosshair motherboard. Athlon X2 6000+ CPU, 600W PSU, 4 Gb of Crucial DDR2 memory, 2 Hitachi 250Gb SATA drives on a striping raid array plus a western digital 160Gb SATA secondary haerd drive. I have a creative X-FI xtreme audio sound card and an Nvidia 7300GT 256Mb Graphics card. Optical drives are 1 CD re-writer and 1 DVD RAM drive.

Usb peripherals are Canon Pixma printer, Canon LIDE Scanner, Logitech fusion webcam, logitech usb keyboard and logitech usb mouse.

If anyone has any ideas I would be most grateful to hear them as I am running XPx64 at the moment and some of my 32 bit software wont work on it.

Thanks in advance.

[forumdude123]

Was this pc preinstalled with vista? If so, back up data and run a system recovery.

If it was a self built machine, back up data, wipe the entire hard drive, then reinstall windows.

If it was preinstalled with XP, your best bet would be to revert to XP, as vista may have some compatibility issues with your bios/hardware.

Is the bios up to date? Sometimes, bios issues can be the cause to these problems.

Is the system up to date? Update the software/drivers of EVERYTHING on your pc.

If you want vista, but a back up OS in case vista constantly locks up, look into dual booting (if you haven't already).

Try the above steps and post what happens after that.

[wit tier]

My machine was self built and I have tried wiping the entire hard drive and the re-installing with the same results.

Before trying to install vista I went to the websites of the manufacturers of all my hardware and downloaded the most up to date vista drivers I could find. I used these when I tried installing vista, also same result.

The only things I havent tried from your suggestions are updating the bios and running a dual boot machine. I will give these a try and let you know how I get on.

Thanks

[scru]

Also, do try to get all the windows updates on ASAP.

[forumdude123]

Guess you are one of thousands running into a glitchy and stubborn OS. Hopefully sp1 will come out and fix it.

[wit tier]

Yeah. hopefully SP1 will fix it, coz I do like the look of Vista. It's just annoying that it seems to be so unstable.

[wit tier]

Tried downloading and installing the available vista updates as well. It didnt seem to make any difference, but I will make sure that when I try Vista again I wiil do so. Hopefully there will be more updates by now that will help with the problem.

Thanks

[forumdude123]

For right now, i'd recommend sticking with xp, because it is very stable and can run anything out there. i would run vista when sp1 comes out if i could, but i am forced to stick with vista. It came preinstalled, and i don't have a spare copy of xp :(

[wit tier]

For right now, i'd recommend sticking with xp, because it is very stable and can run anything out there. i would run vista when sp1 comes out if i could, but i am forced to stick with vista. It came preinstalled, and i don't have a spare copy of xp :(

Sounds like good advice. It's a shame you have to stay with pre-installed software, nothing more annoying than having a good pc and being let down by the software.

[forumdude123]

Well, vista does work simultaneously on my preinstalled notebook with 2gb ram, but on my desktop (2005 model) with only one gig of ram, it was slower than my pc in 2000 with 128mb ram and xp. as you'd expect, i managed to go back to xp by using the factory recovery disc. i hope nobody else has to go through what i went through on that desktop i had!!

[wit tier]

I know when I tried vista I was messing about with it for a week befroe I gave up and went back to x64. Takes ages to re-install all the drivers and software I had on my pc!!! Lucckily I keep all the files I dont wish to lose on an external hard drive, else I would have been searching the net for ages trying to find them again.

I am just going to download the latest bios updates for my motherboard and perhaps give vista a try again this weekend. Fingers crossed it'll work this time.

[forumdude123]

i hope it works!!

[wit tier]

Hi guys, sorry I have been off for a while.

I have tried your suggestions to no avail. Began to wonder if maybe vista didnt like my raid array, so I deleted it and tried installing on a single hard drive. I was encouraged when vista didnt want to recognise one of the disks I had used in my array, so connected the other up instead. All installed fine. Even got to put all my drivers on without any problems. THEN....................................... all of a sudden the whole thing just locked up again for no apparent reason and I had to do a hard re-boot. I was so mad I could have almost picked up my tower and slung it across the room.

Anyway, I have decide that enough is enough and have gone back to x64. At least it is stable on my machine. Thanks for all your suggestions, I really appreciate you trying to help me with this problem, but I think I shall wait until they bring SP1 out and then try again.