Vista Ultimate Locks Every Time I Play Video Files.

S

Silversierra

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 20, 2005
Messages
263
So, I got vista ultimate, and have some serious issues with it. First, it locks my machine EVERY time I play a video file in windows media player. It usually will play at least a few seconds before locking up, but no more than a few minutes. When it locks, everything just freezes, no BSOD, no restart, it just can't do anything, the mouse won't move, can't get to task manager or anything. Second problem is that it also locks when I try to view live tv or record tv in media center.

I thought this problem with locking was related to my tuner(avermedia a180 hd pci tuner), but it locks wmp playing video without the card installed.

I also thought it might be my video drivers so I tried all the drivers I could find, and am currently using in the 100.54 drivers, but it locks regardless of driver version. The odd thing is I can play games for as long as I want, but it doesn't lock.

I've updated all drivers I can find. Sometimes realtek audio hangs, but I still get the video playback lockups if I disable/uninstall the audio device, so it'd seem it's not the issue.

I reinstalled vista now, thinking I had fubar'd it by installing programs that have "known issues," but it still has the same problem. It does it with a clean install and generic drivers/ no extra programs installed as well.

My system is:
Asus A8N5X 939 Nforce 4
XFX 7800GT OC
AMD 939 OPT 165 @ 2.5GHz
2GB G.Skill HX @475 MHz cas 2.5
WD 400GB SATA
BENQ 1655 16X DVD
TAGAN 480W PSU
APC UPS

One thought I had was maybe I should update my bios, I have 0502, 0902 is available.
Also, I have one device in device manager that isn't recognized, ACPI\PNPB006. I can't find drivers, but googling seems to lead to it being a midi/game port or something.

I'm really frustrated with vista, and would appreciate any input.

Edit: I also had a strange experience with vista in sleep mode. It slept through the night until 5AM, then suddenly started up(waking me up), rebooted the computer, and then went to sleep again. Could this be automatic updates, or did my system crash while sleeping(not power outage, it's on ups)?
 
I do recall some issues with WMP in beta.. but it was related to specific types of movie files. What kind of files are you playing? Have you tried different types? (DVD vs WMP etc)

Best bet is to get the windows updates all installed if you havent already, then perhaps see if the event log is showing any errors around the time of the freezes.
 
It locks on dvd or recorded tv files(.dvr-ms, or .mpeg).

I'm "up to date" as far as updates go.

Thanks for the reply, I appreciate the input.

Edit: I now realized that if you dual boot xp and vista, if you boot to xp it DELETES all the vista system restore points. I was doing restore points to try to isolate the problem, but now they're gone, my computer's screwed up, and I can't get back to my "clean" restore points. I want to shoot someone at microsoft... Here's the quote from the help file.
In this version of Windows, restore points are created differently and are not recognized by earlier versions of Windows. If you have a dual-boot configuration and you start an earlier version of Windows, the earlier version will delete any restore points created by this version of Windows. If you start this version of Windows, restore points will resume being created automatically.
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This bull is enough to make me switch to mac.
 
Well it is meant as an upgrade for the older OS. I don't think they intended to have ppl dual boot as it has Compatability Mode just like XP had. Sure some things wont work but time will fix that. It might be a codec problem. Maybe something running in the background?
 
Update: I got it working ok now. I flashed my bios to the newest version (and reset to default settings) and now I get no crashes. So that leads me to believe that my overclock was causing problems in vista. Odd though since my oc was dual prime stable in xp. Maybe vista didn't like my pci-e bus being slightly overclocked. I guess I can't blame M$ for vista crashing if the problem was my overclock all along. Now if I can just get avg to work properly, I keep getting this error.
 
Actually I did read an article a while back about overclocking in Vista... apparently certain bios/driver combinations are not yet very stable in Vista. i.e. nforce4 overclocked is not real stable at this point, but I imagine that once Nvidia gets some decent drivers out it will be fine.

I never read anything specific to video lockups but I did see some game issues mentioned.
 
Silversierra said:
Now if I can just get avg to work properly, I keep getting this error.
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Which version of AVG are you using? My understanding is that 7.1 and lower of AVG free does not work with Vista; 7.5 does (tested). However, AVG Free does not work with 64-bit OS, so if you have Vista 64 you have to get AVG Pro (i.e. buy it)
 
Interesting, hadn't heard of the overclocking issues.

I'm using 7.5 free on 32bit vista ultimate.
I should note avg did work perfectly with my vista for a while, but recently stopped working.
The avg error seemed to start after I updated my realtek audio driver to the vista version, but it could be coincidence.

Also, is it normal to get the same vista "score" at stock cpu(1.8) vs overclocked(2.5)? I get 5.1 either way with my opteron 165.

Thanks for the input.
 
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