Help me, last straw with Vista x64!!!

[jyi786]

Your refusal to not set your system back to stock is not helping the situation.

Thanks for the constructive input, chief. Might want to read the entire thread before you post?

Ok everyone. Update.

I started out with doing exactly what I said I would do. I was going to install keeping my OC intact, and if I had problems, back down to defaults. I obtained a copy of Vista x64 with SP1 slipstreamed, and set out to do the install.

Please note that each install involved a clean wipe (format) of the hard drive that Vista was being installed on.

As I pointed out earlier, I had reason to believe that it was possible the issues I was having was with the Intel INF drivers. So, I left my OC intact and proceeded to install Windows. At the 2nd reboot when Windows is completing the install, the setup promptly froze. Hard lock. No BSOD or anything like that, just hard lock. I went into BIOS, and raised voltages by one tick for northbridge, southbridge, and memory. I restarted the setup from scratch and was able to get Windows installed.

I proceeded to install older INF drivers, and the rest accordingly (Windows Update, device drivers, etc.). So far so good. After I installed a few little programs, Windows promptly froze.

I backed out, went to the BIOS, and got rid of my OC. I simply set my CPU/memory speeds back down to default (since that's basically all I have OCed) and left everything else intact. Off to install Windows again. On the part of Windows setup where it says "Installing Updates", this time setup BSOD on me, with the following error:

"A device driver attempting to corrupt the system has been caught. The faulty driver currently on the Kernel stack must be replaced with a working version.
Technical Info: *** STOP: 0x000000c4"



I backed out, and this time, set my ENTIRE Jumperfree section of my BIOS to AUTO. Auto EVERYTHING, including voltages, timings, etc. etc. Then I went into my CPU setup section and enabled ALL the power saving options (I traditionally disable Speedstep, C1E and Thermal Disable).

Again, install Vista from scratch. This time, Vista setup completed without ANY crashing whatsoever. Well then, time to install drivers and programs and see how it really reacts, heh? Install all device drivers, Windows Update, and loads of programs, and extensively tweak the OS. All of this completed without any crashing whatsoever.

I went ahead and reestablished my OC, but instead of FSB @ 410, I backed down to 400 (this means CPU is running at about 3.21GHz, and memory is default 800MHz). I left it last night undergoing a memory stress test, all 6GB of it under load. I'm going to stress each component separately (memory, video, CPU). Here is where I need your help/opinion.

I have reason to believe that if anything, it might be memory timings. The reason for this is that the third time around, why is it that although I set my CPU/memory back down to default speeds, it still crashed? I know nothing was underpowered; everything had plenty of voltage, and any more would have been getting excessive.

In addition, I'm doing stress testing a bit different. This time, I'm going to be using the x64 variant of Prime95, as well as some other graphics stress tests available. Once again, the environment is the same: ambient temps in 90s + humidity.

So far, the illogical theory that Vista x64 is much pickier about an OC than any other OS is holding out to be.....true. It's illogical for the reasons I stated earlier in this thread, but, so far, is turning out to be true.

Discuss. Constructive suggestions/criticism welcome.

Edit: I realize you'll all need some info on my OC, just to see that nothing was starved for voltage, which most of the time is the most likely culprit in an OC.

CPU @ 1.3875V
Mem @ 2.15V
Northbridge @ 1.30V
Soutbridge @ Auto
Vdroop control ENABLED

 

[SippieCup]

lol.. I wish I saw this eariler as I may be able to save you a lot of time.

the problem is with the asus mobo and memory. the tv tuner doesn't help either.
you need to do 4 things.

1) take out any non essential cards.. I am really justst referring to yer tv tuner..

2) when installing vista.. use 3gb of ram or less. fsilure to do so usually lead to install crashing within a couple minutes into the install regaurdless of OC and timing settings. you will also notice that the setup boxes will pop up right away and you won't be waiting 30-60 seconds waiting between every time you click next and when its first starting up.

2) once vista has started up, you need to download 3 patches from microsofts website. these patches are fizing problems that vista has when usuing over 4GB of ram on select systems. they are NOT pushed through windows update. I am on my phone atm but I can post the links for you later. (you can find them on n-zone as well). I have them saved on my hdd so if you still can't find them I can rapidshare em for ya.

3) reinstall hardware you took out for the install (ram + tv tuner) and set OCs back.

4) install drivers.


I have spent countless hours on this problem before swapping out my asus mobo in my main rig.

I reinstalled the asus mobo in my media center. and it had similar problems again. however I just delt with it until yesterday when I bought a new mobo for my htpc.

seriously though.. keep this in min when you shop for a new computer. asus mobos are the devil

 

[SippieCup]

delete this

 

[SippieCup]

I hate bad service.. sorry for triple post Oo

please delete this post mods

 

[Joe Average]

I can't help but laugh, and I am laughing even as I type this. I'm not doing it as an insult, I assure you. I'm laughing because I used to think I was insane for reinstalling my OS maybe 40 times a week or more for testing, or redoing BIOS settings more than the people that write BIOS code to begin with, or things of that nature. I've spent days doing nothing but fragmenting hard drives into hundreds of thousands of fragments (shotgun blasting the data all over the place) to test defraggers. I've personally installed Vista nearly 5,000 times since it's "official" release back in November of 2006 with Vista Business and countless times before that during the betas. I've installed Windows OSes nearly a quarter million times overall...

And it's absolutely amazing how much shit you've gone through and you still didn't get a clean installation of the OS till you removed all the overclocking - so I'm laughing at the irony of the thread and the suggestions and there being, at least to some small degree, a bit of "finality" to that aspect of the process. Hope that makes sense, if not I'm sure re-reading this a few times will get you laughing yourself and it's all good.

Personally, I think you just need to get a new damned CPU myself. Stop pushing that E6420 so damned far and just go get a newer and vastly more power efficient Core 2 Duo in the Wolfdale class.

As for the Asus comment, I'll just say that aside from Abit being #1 on my "never ever will I buy that shit again" list, Asus motherboards are #2 and I've owned a shitload of 'em over the years and worked on far far more. I'm a solid Gigabyte man myself, and of the ones I've owned over the past decade, not one has given me a single reason to disparage the Gigabyte brand name.

Follow the suggestions given above as they would have been what I would have stated after seeing the results of the zero system overclock. Creating a "base" system to work with where the OS installs and runs stable is the first step, and I chose not to mention all that in previous posts because... well... dammit, it's that overclock that was hampering you in the first place.

You can't troubleshoot an OS installation if you can't get the damned OS installed.

Now that you've got it installed or figured out that a zero overclock will get it to that state, perhaps not wasting days doing testing on the stability would be a good idea. You know it was stable at the overclocked settings over the past year, that's fine, so noted. But now things are different, the OS is different, perhaps it's time for a fresh perspective on all this. Start clean, start fresh, and don't go put yourself - or that proven hardware - through all that shit again.

I question the need for such excessive stress testing personally. Most hardware review sites and magazines don't even stress hardware that much - why should you?

 

[Dan_D]

lol.. I wish I saw this eariler as I may be able to save you a lot of time.

the problem is with the asus mobo and memory. the tv tuner doesn't help either.
you need to do 4 things.

1) take out any non essential cards.. I am really justst referring to yer tv tuner..

2) when installing vista.. use 3gb of ram or less. fsilure to do so usually lead to install crashing within a couple minutes into the install regaurdless of OC and timing settings. you will also notice that the setup boxes will pop up right away and you won't be waiting 30-60 seconds waiting between every time you click next and when its first starting up.

2) once vista has started up, you need to download 3 patches from microsofts website. these patches are fizing problems that vista has when usuing over 4GB of ram on select systems. they are NOT pushed through windows update. I am on my phone atm but I can post the links for you later. (you can find them on n-zone as well). I have them saved on my hdd so if you still can't find them I can rapidshare em for ya.

3) reinstall hardware you took out for the install (ram + tv tuner) and set OCs back.

4) install drivers.


I have spent countless hours on this problem before swapping out my asus mobo in my main rig.

I reinstalled the asus mobo in my media center. and it had similar problems again. however I just delt with it until yesterday when I bought a new mobo for my htpc.

seriously though.. keep this in min when you shop for a new computer. asus mobos are the devil

You were making sense until that last part. I'm not saying that every ASUS motherboard is a gem because that wouldn't be true but I've never had any major problems with ASUS motherboards and if you look on the review section os the site I've worked with a TON of ASUS boards. In fact I've worked with more ASUS boards than anything else. The only really bad one I ever touched was the Striker Extreme. On that I blame the chipset more than I blame ASUS.

In any case the rest of your advice is very sound. I'd also like to point out that I've seen issues like this before and sometimes it was a cable issue and on more than one occasion it was the hard drive. I know the OP's hard drive works fine with Windows XP Professional X64 Edition, but trust me there could be something really wrong with the drive that only rears its' ugly head under very specific circumstances. If the OP has another hard drive floating around that he can swap in real quick, he should disconnect the other hard drive and run with a different one just to see what happens. I know this doesn't make the most sense but I've seen it work too many times to discount it.

Also do you (the OP) run with a UPS? If you do disregard. If you don't you should think about it. I've lived in some older homes and apartment buildings where the power was screwy and my computer at the time was unstable but at random times and I never figured out the issue until someone suggested that I check the power coming out of the wall. Now I had no Kill-A-Watt or anything like that so I used a simple multi-meter that cost me around $15 and I found out my wall sockets weren't putting out but about 91-95v at maximum. I wasn't getting the full 110v AC power I should have been getting to input into the PSU. Now these things can usually tolerate some fluctuations and a drop in power, but only to a certain degree. (Around 97-95v I think.) I bougth a UPS charged it up and then put my computer on the UPS and all my problems went away immediately. Not saying this is the OP's issue but it is something to consider if the OP doesn't already have a UPS.

 

[SippieCup]

I can't help but laugh, and I am laughing even as I type this. I'm not doing it as an insult, I assure you. I'm laughing because I used to think I was insane for reinstalling my OS maybe 40 times a week or more for testing, or redoing BIOS settings more than the people that write BIOS code to begin with, or things of that nature. I've spent days doing nothing but fragmenting hard drives into hundreds of thousands of fragments (shotgun blasting the data all over the place) to test defraggers. I've personally installed Vista nearly 5,000 times since it's "official" release back in November of 2006 with Vista Business and countless times before that during the betas. I've installed Windows OSes nearly a quarter million times overall...

And it's absolutely amazing how much shit you've gone through and you still didn't get a clean installation of the OS till you removed all the overclocking - so I'm laughing at the irony of the thread and the suggestions and there being, at least to some small degree, a bit of "finality" to that aspect of the process. Hope that makes sense, if not I'm sure re-reading this a few times will get you laughing yourself and it's all good.

Personally, I think you just need to get a new damned CPU myself. Stop pushing that E6420 so damned far and just go get a newer and vastly more power efficient Core 2 Duo in the Wolfdale class.

As for the Asus comment, I'll just say that aside from Abit being #1 on my "never ever will I buy that shit again" list, Asus motherboards are #2 and I've owned a shitload of 'em over the years and worked on far far more. I'm a solid Gigabyte man myself, and of the ones I've owned over the past decade, not one has given me a single reason to disparage the Gigabyte brand name.

Follow the suggestions given above as they would have been what I would have stated after seeing the results of the zero system overclock. Creating a "base" system to work with where the OS installs and runs stable is the first step, and I chose not to mention all that in previous posts because... well... dammit, it's that overclock that was hampering you in the first place.

You can't troubleshoot an OS installation if you can't get the damned OS installed.

Now that you've got it installed or figured out that a zero overclock will get it to that state, perhaps not wasting days doing testing on the stability would be a good idea. You know it was stable at the overclocked settings over the past year, that's fine, so noted. But now things are different, the OS is different, perhaps it's time for a fresh perspective on all this. Start clean, start fresh, and don't go put yourself - or that proven hardware - through all that shit again.

I question the need for such excessive stress testing personally. Most hardware review sites and magazines don't even stress hardware that much - why should you?

actually when following my steps you can have the oc enabled at full speed once ypu install. you just need to get those patches first.

and like you I am now a gigabyte guy as well. asus boards are absolute crap. the asus board which I needed to do those steps for has been replaced twice by gigabyte boards (second one comes today too)

 

[jyi786]

...snip x3

Post reply much???

1) take out any non essential cards.. I am really justst referring to yer tv tuner..

2) when installing vista.. use 3gb of ram or less. fsilure to do so usually lead to install crashing within a couple minutes into the install regaurdless of OC and timing settings. you will also notice that the setup boxes will pop up right away and you won't be waiting 30-60 seconds waiting between every time you click next and when its first starting up.

2) once vista has started up, you need to download 3 patches from microsofts website. these patches are fizing problems that vista has when usuing over 4GB of ram on select systems. they are NOT pushed through windows update. I am on my phone atm but I can post the links for you later. (you can find them on n-zone as well). I have them saved on my hdd so if you still can't find them I can rapidshare em for ya.

3) reinstall hardware you took out for the install (ram + tv tuner) and set OCs back.

My install disc has SP1 slipstreamed, so this does not apply. I agree that it was possible on the previous disc I was using that this might have been the case, but even using the SP1 slipstreamed disc still didn't solve my crashing issue. Setup boxes within the install were instantaneous, as they have always been.

I installed the TV tuner without incident last night. Granted, there is a bug with the actual TV software, but that's not due to the driver, so I'll iron that out with Hauppauge.

I do not agree with your assertion that it is the motherboard, or that Asus motherboards are inferior to any other. On the contrary, I find Asus boards to be the best built ones out there, as well as the best supported through BIOS updates. We already established that the issue the is due to the fact that this OS is more pickier on OCs than any other OS, and, if you read my last post, I stated that this may definitely be true. I just need more time to complete a different style of stress testing now that I finally have the OS installed.

 

[jyi786]

And it's absolutely amazing how much shit you've gone through and you still didn't get a clean installation of the OS till you removed all the overclocking - so I'm laughing at the irony of the thread and the suggestions and there being, at least to some small degree, a bit of "finality" to that aspect of the process. Hope that makes sense, if not I'm sure re-reading this a few times will get you laughing yourself and it's all good.

Well, not exactly a laugh. It's more like a WTF. Like I said, this is the absolute first OS I've had in my experience that judged an OC differently than any other. Remember, I'm still not out of the woods yet. There have been installs of Vista that looked to have gone ok, like right now, only in the end to crash at a later time when I'm installing some other software that should install just fine. So, yeah, it's not over yet. I'm just posting updates as I go along this time, for the record.

Personally, I think you just need to get a new damned CPU myself. Stop pushing that E6420 so damned far and just go get a newer and vastly more power efficient Core 2 Duo in the Wolfdale class.

I actually want a Core 2 Quad. Wolfdale, Penryn, don't care, but I do want a quad.

Follow the suggestions given above as they would have been what I would have stated after seeing the results of the zero system overclock. Creating a "base" system to work with where the OS installs and runs stable is the first step, and I chose not to mention all that in previous posts because... well... dammit, it's that overclock that was hampering you in the first place.

Not yet established...so we have yet to see. I'm already 100% aware of what you are talking about; thanks for the advice nevertheless.

You can't troubleshoot an OS installation if you can't get the damned OS installed.

true.dat. Especially with this one. Totally new beast. Won't accept a good known OC. 1st time ever.

But now things are different, the OS is different, perhaps it's time for a fresh perspective on all this.

Exactly. Lowest common denominator. If this rig can be stable on Vista x64, it's going to be stable on any damn OS out there.

Start clean, start fresh, and don't go put yourself - or that proven hardware - through all that shit again.

I question the need for such excessive stress testing personally. Most hardware review sites and magazines don't even stress hardware that much - why should you?

Because I'm anal. Because systems that I've built in which I did NOT do the stress testing always had a propensity to take a shit at the worst possible time. All rigs that I've built in which I stress tested the way that I do allows me to learn the weaknesses and exploit the strengths of a particular system, therefore rendering it almost bulletproof to any perceived notion that any instability would be due to the hardware rather than the software. Believe me, there's a LOT of shitty code out there today that can get loaded on a machine.

I sure as hell hope Vista is not one of them, and, from the looks of it, it's not (it's really nice and fast when it's stable). It's just that it's different. I'm willing to accept it, as long as it behaves.

Also do you (the OP) run with a UPS? If you do disregard. If you don't you should think about it. I've lived in some older homes and apartment buildings where the power was screwy and my computer at the time was unstable but at random times and I never figured out the issue until someone suggested that I check the power coming out of the wall.

Dammit I've been thinking about it for the better part of a year. You'd think as a IT admin when I'm working around servers that have loads of APC backup units that I'd at least be running one on my own personal rig, which I should Lack of funds is usually my problem, but I've been dressing one up lately. How does this one look for the rig in sig?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16842101006

 

[DeaconFrost]

The 4 GB install problem only affects some boards, as it is certainly not affecting every system with 4 GB installed. It is primarily Nvidia based boards as well. If you are using a disc with SP1 built-in, you already have those patches applied.

 

[Dan_D]

Dammit I've been thinking about it for the better part of a year. You'd think as a IT admin when I'm working around servers that have loads of APC backup units that I'd at least be running one on my own personal rig, which I should Lack of funds is usually my problem, but I've been dressing one up lately. How does this one look for the rig in sig?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16842101006

I've got one just like that. It works very well. I say go for it. Also if you can't figure out anything else, do not discount what I said about the hard disk drives. I've seen fixes to problems that didn't make much sense yet absolutely fixed the problem for whatever reason.

 

[Dan_D]

The 4 GB install problem only affects some boards, as it is certainly not affecting every system with 4 GB installed. It is primarily Nvidia based boards as well. If you are using a disc with SP1 built-in, you already have those patches applied.

It effects anything with a 32bit ACPI controller. The only chipsets I've actually seen effected by this were NVIDIA 600 and 700 series chipsets.

 

[jyi786]

I've got one just like that. It works very well. I say go for it. Also if you can't figure out anything else, do not discount what I said about the hard disk drives. I've seen fixes to problems that didn't make much sense yet absolutely fixed the problem for whatever reason.

Yes, this is one thing I already tried. I tried it between a Samsung 160GB and the current WD 500GB drives that I have in my rig. Same issue with both.

 

[Dan_D]

Yes, this is one thing I already tried. I tried it between a Samsung 160GB and the current WD 500GB drives that I have in my rig. Same issue with both.

Ok, I didn't catch that if you posted that earlier. I skimmed through your posts but I didn't see that. In any case the UPS thing might do the job. It did for me once upon a time. Now I won't run my computer equipment without one.

 

[Joe Average]

You're an IT Admin and you don't use a UPS on that machine at home?

Just trying to keep it light, yanno. In today's world, not having a UPS on valuable PC hardware is... well... shameful.

 

[jyi786]

You're an IT Admin and you don't use a UPS on that machine at home?

[IMG/snip[/IMG]

Just trying to keep it light, yanno. In today's world, not having a UPS on valuable PC hardware is... well... shameful.

LOLZ...

 

[Joe Average]

Yah, first thing that came to mind when the issue of a UPS was brought up. I had a better one in the past but couldn't find it, found that one with a quick cursory Google Image search. Pretty funny stuff... I'm still giggling sitting here even now, everytime I reload this page I break out in giggles and my Wife is wondering the same thing you did: WTF

 

[jyi786]

Memory been testing for 9 hours straight; ambient temps hitting about 92F + humidity. Stable, still running.

 

[bigdogchris]

Thanks for the constructive input, chief.

Not a problem, son. By the way, I did read the entire post. What I got from it was that you refused to at least set your system to stock speed to verify that Vista was the problem, rather than your OC. Even now you refuse to set it to stock to 100% insure it is stable.

I appreciate you bashing an amazing OS when the problem is actually your own stubbornness; It shines through what the real problem is when most people criticize vista, their own mistakes.

 

[SippieCup]

Post reply much???



My install disc has SP1 slipstreamed, so this does not apply. I agree that it was possible on the previous disc I was using that this might have been the case, but even using the SP1 slipstreamed disc still didn't solve my crashing issue. Setup boxes within the install were instantaneous, as they have always been.

I installed the TV tuner without incident last night. Granted, there is a bug with the actual TV software, but that's not due to the driver, so I'll iron that out with Hauppauge.

I do not agree with your assertion that it is the motherboard, or that Asus motherboards are inferior to any other. On the contrary, I find Asus boards to be the best built ones out there, as well as the best supported through BIOS updates. We already established that the issue the is due to the fact that this OS is more pickier on OCs than any other OS, and, if you read my last post, I stated that this may definitely be true. I just need more time to complete a different style of stress testing now that I finally have the OS installed.

bah..

To OP: since you are just going to ignore everything i say i guess this will be my last post. Just a word of advice later on, dont go to a forum asking for help, they disregaurding it before thinking. As much as you may love thinking you know everything, you don't. that being said, listen to the other people on this forum rather than just hearing what they say and doing thier own thing.

to those who say these patches are applied to SP1: i regret to inform you that they are not in it to the best of my knowledge. in order to get to these you must go through the horrible layout of microsoft's support site.

The reason why i am so conviced they arent on SP1, is because even my SP1 slimstreamed disk install gave me problems until i reinstalled the patches. However, if you still believe they are in SP1, just stop reading right now.

if you do infact want to keep reading on, here are the links:


The first three are for the 4GB+ limits, i think one of them (the virtual memory for games and high mem usage patch) is included in SP1. however, the nvidia fixes are not.
These fixes usually solve any hard drives one will get, along with a couple cable problems (before the patches, i could not use a sata DVD drive, after.. i was able to)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929777
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940105
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930261/en-us

you also said something about other devices not working but didnt go into speifics, if by this you mean USB drives, ipods, keyboard, and anything USB/firewire related.. get this patch:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925528/en-us

You also said something about the 0x0000004C error, there should be a another code right after it. usually on nvidia boards is x218. rather than talk about it myself, i decided i'd just find the microsoft help topic and quote that.. so here:

This parameter means that a necessary registry hive file could not be loaded. For example, this could occur if the file is damaged or missing. If the file is damaged or missing, use an ERD to repair the damage, or complete a reinstallation. Some less obvious causes for this parameter are that the driver has damaged the registry data while the data is loading into memory, or the memory where the registry file was loaded is not actually memory. In particular, AST EISA machines with 16 megabytes (MB) or more of memory must have enabled access to the memory above 16MB in the EISA Configuration Utility. If this memory is not enabled, a registry file may be loaded into this location, but returns 0xffffffff when you view the memory.

sound familiar? in layman terms its usually because your memory controlling is fucking up where to put the stuff on the memory. this usually only occurs in 4GB+ computers.

how do you fix this? by installing those first three patches (but you said you didnt need those so i guess you like the bluescreen )

lastly for installing on computers w/ more than 4GB of ram, you absolutely need this patch(also sorts out a couple cable errors). it does more than it says imo, after installing it i noticed my computer running a bit faster, and i stopped getting bluescreens by IRQ-type errors.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929777/en-us

this one may also be in SP1, but i dont know for sure... i always install it anyway.


but yeah, go on with your selective reading and nitpick on what i said and disregard it entirely, i dont really know why i help people on forums anymore when they act like this...

 

[jyi786]

Not a problem, son. By the way, I did read the entire post. What I got from it was that you refused to at least set your system to stock speed to verify that Vista was the problem, rather than your OC. Even now you refuse to set it to stock to 100% insure it is stable.

I appreciate you bashing an amazing OS when the problem is actually your own stubbornness; It shines through what the real problem is when most people criticize vista, their own mistakes.

Why is there ALWAYS someone who has to refer to an issue someone is having with Vista as "Vista bashing"? You can refrain from threadcrapping. I don't want this thread going down the drain.

I have a genuine issue with Vista, I post to get feedback. I consider all options, and ask that everyone consider my situation, COMPLETELY.

In no way, shape or form was I Vista bashing. As a matter of fact, most of the proponents of Vista bashers are, I agree, people who make unfounded allegations against the OS. The issue that I am having, however, is completely illogical. A known 100, no, 100,000% known good OC that I've been working with for the better part of a year happens to not work with ONLY Vista x64. At least that's what it's come down to so far, and my testing is not completely over.

Sorry, Vista is not a completely amazing OS, but has the potential to be. There are a lot of quirks to it, but quirks that I am willing to accept, given that it works.

I did set to 100% default. This is how the install of the OS went.

Your allegation that I am "Vista bashing" holds no merit. If I was simply a "basher", I wouldn't have burnt so much midnight oil and spent so many resources and time trying to give it a chance to work. Sometimes, you just need to get people's feedback to point you in the right direction. The advice you offered in your first post in this thread happened to be advice people already gave me numerous times and that I acknowledged. Thus, my reaction.

So please. No more Vista bashing crap, because that's not what this thread entails.

 

[SippieCup]

I've got one just like that. It works very well. I say go for it. Also if you can't figure out anything else, do not discount what I said about the hard disk drives. I've seen fixes to problems that didn't make much sense yet absolutely fixed the problem for whatever reason.

this quote reminds me..

before you go out shopping for new HDDs, try changing around the sata ports you are using. my Asus m2n-sli would not accept any sata dvd drive on any sata ports besides 2 and 3 if 1 was empty. and wouldnt accept it if i put it in sata 3 and was running something in sata port 2.. its all sorts of messed up.. dunno why... but it worked in those configs after i installed my patches.. lol

 

[jyi786]

<snip....>

Dude, calm down seriously. Stop getting so emotional.

I appreciate, and already took into consideration what you were saying previously. As a matter of fact, it was one of the first few things I tried, because I remember a thread on here a while back when people were having issues with 4GB of RAM in Vista x64. I wasn't one of them, but I remembered it.

So when the problem came up, that's what I tried to do, install the patches. The same ones you posted in the links you provided. Each one of them, when I downloaded and tried to install, came back with this:

"This patch does not apply to your system."

This means that the patch is already applied to the system. The ONLY one that needed to be installed was the latest x64 Reliability Update, which I DID install.

 

[legendz411]

I have to agree.
Their has been no disturbence in the balence of Vista-Bash:Vista-Lovemonkey



That being said, I agree with your quirky comment. Man is Vista different, and some things I had set up in XP dont work the same, (or at all) in Vista. Like you however, I am willing to work with it. It is not a bad OS by any means. I also brought some of this on myself by moving from XP x86 to Vista x64

 

[SippieCup]

Dude, calm down seriously. Stop getting so emotional.

I appreciate, and already took into consideration what you were saying previously. As a matter of fact, it was one of the first few things I tried, because I remember a thread on here a while back when people were having issues with 4GB of RAM in Vista x64. I wasn't one of them, but I remembered it.

So when the problem came up, that's what I tried to do, install the patches. The same ones you posted in the links you provided. Each one of them, when I downloaded and tried to install, came back with this:

"This patch does not apply to your system."

This means that the patch is already applied to the system. The ONLY one that needed to be installed was the latest x64 Reliability Update, which I DID install.

ah ok. then they would be in that ^^

have you tried uninstalling patches from windows? dunno which ones would help to uninstall but.. thats what fixed my laptop and desktop about a week ago.

what sticks of ram are you using? could possibly be that vista is being picky bout that.. specially since they are different sizes (unless you have 1.5GB sticks..)

btw.. does your HVR work in media center? mine never did on my ASUS system.. had to buy a new tv tuner >.<

 

[legendz411]

I have to agree.
Their has been no disturbence in the balence of Vista-Bash:Vista-Lovemonkey



That being said, I agree with your quirky comment. Man is Vista different, and some things I had set up in XP dont work the same, (or at all) in Vista. Like you however, I am willing to work with it. It is not a bad OS by any means. I also brought some of this on myself by moving from XP x86 to Vista x64

 

[legendz411]

I have to agree.
Their has been no disturbence in the balence of Vista-Bash:Vista-Lovemonkey



That being said, I agree with your quirky comment. Man is Vista different, and some things I had set up in XP dont work the same, (or at all) in Vista. Like you however, I am willing to work with it. It is not a bad OS by any means. I also brought some of this on myself by moving from XP x86 to Vista x64

 

[jyi786]

ah ok. then they would be in that ^^

have you tried uninstalling patches from windows? dunno which ones would help to uninstall but.. thats what fixed my laptop and desktop about a week ago.

what sticks of ram are you using? could possibly be that vista is being picky bout that.. specially since they are different sizes (unless you have 1.5GB sticks..)

btw.. does your HVR work in media center? mine never did on my ASUS system.. had to buy a new tv tuner >.<

Well, normally I don't uninstall patches from Windows Update, if that's what you're asking. I haven't tried it because the crashing happened during the actual Windows setup, which meant that it was not the fault of any update.

I am using 2 x 2GB, and 2 x 1GB of the same Corsair RAM. XMS2 PC6400.

I haven't tried the HVR in Windows Media Center. I know that the actual TV tuner works; I opened and configured WinTV with no problem.

 

[zupahwez0e]

snip

all of those fixes u posted are included in sp1 except
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925528/en-us

 

[jyi786]

I figured you guys were due an update.

I've finished all stress testing, and installed all drivers, and now basically have the OS as my main platform. I have some little niggles with sleep/hibernate, as they are much too slow, although they do work fine. The hybrid sleep mode doesn't work right; on resume, svchost.exe takes up 50% of the CPU and will never go down. Disabling hybrid sleep and using conventional sleep/hibernate works perfectly, but is dog slow.

Anyone have any hints/tips for this?

 

[brom42]

I figured you guys were due an update.

I've finished all stress testing, and installed all drivers, and now basically have the OS as my main platform. I have some little niggles with sleep/hibernate, as they are much too slow, although they do work fine. The hybrid sleep mode doesn't work right; on resume, svchost.exe takes up 50% of the CPU and will never go down. Disabling hybrid sleep and using conventional sleep/hibernate works perfectly, but is dog slow.

Anyone have any hints/tips for this?

I have trouble with sleep that I narrowed down to the (big surprise) driver for my 8600GT. I basically found that the best method is to find the driver release the works best with sleep and not touching it. I'm not big into PC gaming, which is why I have a 256mb 8600GT paired with a 30" LCD, so getting the latest drivers from Nvidia isn't a big deal for me.

 

[Joe Average]

Bleh. All that effort, stress, and time and you're worried about how the machine acts when it's sleeping now? Geez, you're picky.

I never put my hardware to sleep or hibernate, it's either on or off so I can't help much there, but here's the gist of it:

Sleep/Hibernate stuff is directly controlled by ACPI - ACPI is directly related to driver support - drivers... well...

"It's the drivers... it's always the god damned drivers..."

That should help you figure it out. Even if all your hardware is listed as functional in Device Manager (no exclamation points), proper Sleep/Hibernate support functionality will be directly related to the ACPI support in each and every driver. If you have 99.999% ACPI support, your entire power settings for Sleep/Hibernate simply won't work correctly and you'll encounter issues such as those you're having now.

The problem is there's no 100% accurate way to find out which driver is causing the issues, no matter how small or insignificant they might seem. The simple situation is that it either works or it doesn't, as lackluster as that seems. XP has been around for so long that ACPI and power related driver issues are nearly non-existent, but with Vista being so new to the world, the drivers still aren't nearly as matured and stable in that respect.

Only thing you can do is hope for the best and that the right combination of drivers will make that connection at some point with updated versions and it all works 100%.

 

[jyi786]

Bleh. All that effort, stress, and time and you're worried about how the machine acts when it's sleeping now? Geez, you're picky.

I never put my hardware to sleep or hibernate, it's either on or off so I can't help much there, but here's the gist of it:

Sleep/Hibernate stuff is directly controlled by ACPI - ACPI is directly related to driver support - drivers... well...

"It's the drivers... it's always the god damned drivers..."

That should help you figure it out. Even if all your hardware is listed as functional in Device Manager (no exclamation points), proper Sleep/Hibernate support functionality will be directly related to the ACPI support in each and every driver. If you have 99.999% ACPI support, your entire power settings for Sleep/Hibernate simply won't work correctly and you'll encounter issues such as those you're having now.

The problem is there's no 100% accurate way to find out which driver is causing the issues, no matter how small or insignificant they might seem. The simple situation is that it either works or it doesn't, as lackluster as that seems. XP has been around for so long that ACPI and power related driver issues are nearly non-existent, but with Vista being so new to the world, the drivers still aren't nearly as matured and stable in that respect.

Only thing you can do is hope for the best and that the right combination of drivers will make that connection at some point with updated versions and it all works 100%.

lol

Yeah, I'll give you that. I'm damn picky when it comes to my hardware. I'm the master, not it, and that's how I see it. It does what I tell it to do, not the other way around. Imagine how pissed off I get when I tell it to go to bed and doesn't listen to me quick enough.

At any rate, it's a bit better now. I believe that Superfetch is doing its job properly, and is speeding everything up. Not to mention defragging REALLY helps in Vista, unlike in XP, where it only marginally increases performance. For instance, after defragging for the first time in Vista, I saw startup speeds over 2x as fast.

 

[limxdul]

WinTV HVR-1800-MCE

There is your problem. Hauppauge's drivers don't work right with 4+GB of ram and will completely trash the system. You can try all the drivers you want, last time I checked, they all had the problem.

Pull the WinTV card out of the system and see if it works. I had to get rid of my card and go to a different brand to get it working in Vista x64 with my 8gb ram.

Wow, something very similar happened to me as well. I was running an EDIMAX EW-7128G PCI Wireless Card - Retail and its native or most recent upgraded drivers online just _could not handle anything equal to or more than 4GB of memory_. I was having the weirdest crashes and screen freezes in vista 64 bit with 8GB of memory until I just ran on 2GB, which ran fine.

The blips would come whenever I download a large amount and that data has to go to the disk, the driver just didn't know how to run with that much memory. So anyone that's reading this and is planning a new rig with vista 64x, stay away from this pos unless you want to run on bare memory.


Now I'm just running a straight line into the gigabit and no problems whatsoever.

 

[Catweazle]

On the Overclock issue, I'm amazed that there was so much discussion of and resistance to it. That issue isn't a Vista-specific issue. It's been common wisdom since about forever and a day that installing Windows to an already overclocked rig is hit and miss, and that safe practice is to revert to stock settings, install the OS, and then re-apply the overclock. Sure, Vista can be less tolerant than XP was, but then XP was less tolerant of hardware anomolies than Win 98 was before it. That's just the way of it. Time moves on.


That said, when I installed this particular rig I'm typing from now I actually forgot to remove the overclock. Vista installed fine, and it's now been running rock solid since January last year. I've never though of that as anything but good luck though. I've seen (or heard about) far too many machines which have had (usually XP) installed to an overclocked system only to have ever-increasing installation corruption related stability issues emerge afterwards.

Far as I'm concerned:

Remove the overclock
Install Windows
Re-apply the overclock

is just Standard Operating Procedure!

 

[Mav451]

So what's the update regarding those 4GB RAM patches - do I need to download those 3 additional updates, and only initially boot with 2GB for Vista x64?

The first three are for the 4GB+ limits, i think one of them (the virtual memory for games and high mem usage patch) is included in SP1. however, the nvidia fixes are not.
These fixes usually solve any hard drives one will get, along with a couple cable problems (before the patches, i could not use a sata DVD drive, after.. i was able to)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929777
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940105
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930261/en-us

Or is Integrated SP1 already going to have these in there?

 

[OldMX]

So what's the update regarding those 4GB RAM patches - do I need to download those 3 additional updates, and only initially boot with 2GB for Vista x64?

Or is Integrated SP1 already going to have these in there?

nlite sp1 into your install disk, presto..no more 4GB patches needed

 

[Mav451]

err no I mean if I buy Integrated SP1 (I don't have Vista yet), then this is a non-issue?

I'm asking b/c the guy who brought it up was saying SP1 didn't actually include these.

 

[Catweazle]

Did you read post #69 in the thread?

 

[DeaconFrost]

err no I mean if I buy Integrated SP1 (I don't have Vista yet), then this is a non-issue?

Yes, and most likely, it was a non-issue for you all the time, considering you have an Intel chipset mobo.