Windows Vista Home Premium Locking Up

First off, I want to voice my displeasure with Microsoft in their "Upgrade"
disk. I was running XP Professional and the "upgrade" disk will not do a
true upgrade. You have to overwrite your operating system and do a clean
install.

Second, I never had a bit of problems running XP Professional on my system.
I have a 3 gig processor with 2 gigs of ram. As soon as I took the plunge
and installed Windows Vista over my XP Professional, the system constantly
locked up after about 5 or 10 minutes of running the program. I ran the
memory checker that Vista has and there isn't anything wrong with my ram.

Of course, once the system locks up, you have to reboot the system, and
guess what, Microsoft doesn't get notified of the problem.

Windows Vista does not allow you to do a ctrl/alt delete so you have to
manually turn off the computer.

I am very dissapointed in the product. When it works, it is pretty slick;
however, I cannot have my computer locking up on a constant basis. So, I am
typing this from XP Professional!

You can have Vista. It's not worth the money!

 

Are there any errors in the event logs? Vista has some excellent
troubleshooting reports and the event logs track much more than in XP. Start
with the Reliability and Performance Monitor.

 

Hi,

You should have checked the upgrade matrix before making your purchase. Had
you done so, then you would have realized that XP Pro would only upgrade to
Business or Ultimate. Home Premium (and Basic) is for users of WinXP Home.

That said, if XP ran fine on the system, then you likely do not have faulty
hardware. What remains then, assuming you've not installed any software yet,
is unsupported hardware - meaning one or more pieces of hardware on the
system are not supported in Vista or that you need drivers from the
manufacturer. Did you run the upgrade advisor prior to installing? Did you
check with the system manufacturer for suitability on this system?

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

I am received no errors in the event log.

 

I am running an ASUS Motherboard on a homebuilt system with an Intel chip.
No problems existed in XP.

 

I am having similar trouble on a brand new HP computer 100 percent Vista
compatable even ran all the Microsoft advisors prgms. Computer loclk up
randomly for twenty seconds totaly then releases control till next lock up. I
do web pages and cannot suffer these troubles I have reverted bak to my old
XP xomputer. Upgrading to XP was not real bad but had its trouble going to
Vista has cause me grief. Like my frind told me wait a year before upgrading
I never listen. I am always looking for a new look and feel. Was the upgrade
work it no, seems they never do things right.

Tom

 

Just an idea if you are willing to experiment:

Try downloading installing the chipset from ASUS for the board? When
installing it might refuse the first time, then offer to attempt to install
again in a compatibility mode.

Also peruse ASUS's BIOS offerings, t'see if there's anything recent that
applies.

If you do decide to download from ASUS, be patient, as their servers can be
as slow as molasses in February.

Also, JFYI, Vista does have a CTRL + ALT + Del .. it brings up an options
screen.

Saucy Lemon

 

The ASUS drivers actually had no trouble installing on Vista (Even if
they're for XP) and hadn't caused me any trouble. And this was for RC2
x86.

When freezing up, Vista should show an "Explorer is unresponsive"
window with 3 options, just make it restart explorer.

@Skynut36 - The processor's system clock is very difficult to state
now, being that the system clock and memory clock of most AMD and intel
chipsets have had a make-over. Close Windows Defender if it's running,
Windows Sidebar and back track to any drivers you have installed and
restore them to default (rollback).

@Rick Rogers - Both Windows Vista and Windows XP Professional run on
the same i386 architecture and have no differential effects from
upgrading from the wrong operating system. Vista only verifies your
current copy of Windows XP, backs up the partition into a file and
finally installs Vista as a new Operating System. If any system has
"Vista Capable" or "Vista Premium Ready" slapped onto the box, then one
would assume that either Microsoft or the Producer of said hardware
would not have any issues with any Vista release.

 

Hi,

Check with Asus for motherboard driver updates. Some with the nvidia
chipsets have been having major problems.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

I agree with the others. Look for a BIOS update. It seems many Asus boards
need a BIOS update for Vista.

 

Tom,

I have a new HP computer that is doing this exact same thing, but
seeing that you switched by to XP will make it hard to compare notes.
I will update if I find anything new out.

 

Tom, I don't know if this will help or not, but I was having a similar
problem in Home Premium. System would lockup/freeze for 10 - 40 seconds and
come back like nothing happened. This is a new Dell machine and Dell had me
running all kinds of checks on Hard drive and Memory. At one point, I was
running the Performance Monitoring and saw really high (400+) memory page
faults and high spikes in disk usage around the time of lockups. I removed
the news feed gadget and turned off my slide show gadget which seemed to
help. The real help that I found was to go into Norton Internet Security,
Reports & Stats and turn off the logging of alerts. For some reason, the Dell
Support agent was trying to do multiple opens on the log files. I have now
been able to keep things running for more than 2 hours at a time without any
lockups.

 

Found this in the technet forum, and decided to try it on my Dell DM061/E520.
Have now been running for over 2 hours without a freeze.
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1358943&SiteID=17&PageID=1
On my machine the 2 orange cables were on SATA 1 and 4. I moved 4 to 5 and 1
to 4. Went into setup and reset the swithces. Sure beats Dell's suggestion to
reinstall Vista. Check Event viewer for Errors with IAStorv.

 

I am having the same problem with Vista locking up, but mine is periodic. It
happens when I leave the computer idle for 30-40 minutes as well as when I
have multiple applications running at the same time (like when I'm editing a
Word document and I open Windows Mail). It doesn't happen reliably either.
Sometimes the computer will run for several hours without an issue. Other
times it will lock up as soon as the screen saver kicks on or within minutes
of starting an application.

I also play WoW but I haven't had any problems with WoW/Vista. It seems to
be screensavers and email that cause my Vista to lock up on me. I cannot
replicate the issue, it's always hit or miss.

Software: Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade (was XP Pro)
Mainboard: MSI K9A Platinum
CPU: Athalon 64 3800+ Lima
2GB DDR2 800 ram
Vidcard: ATI Radeon 1650 Pro
HD: 100GB Western Digital SATA 3.0

I know my processor's not overheating, it's running at a stable 33*C (46*C
under full load), System temp is 28*C. My ram is all brand new, as are the
cpu and board. Running XP the system was stable.

We really need to find a way to solve this issue--preferably before the
constant reboots trash my hard drive and my husband strangles me for spending
$160 on something that he sees crash 6-8x a day.

 

Open the Event Viewer, check the Windows logs for System errors that point to
iaStor0 or iaStorV. If you see those, then I would suggest looking for an
updated BIOS and firmware for your DVDROM assuming you have one. This would
be the first post that I have seen on the Athalon processor. Also, here is
another forum to look at.
http://forums.microsoft.com/technet/showpost.aspx?postid=1358943&siteid=17&PageID=1

 

I'm a novice, or rather completely ignorant when it comes to the
technical hardware of a computer, but I have been using one since
Commodore first came out...so I do have years of experience about how
they should work!

My new Dell Inspiron computer that I bought in December came with Vista
loaded on it. I have never gone through such a nightmare since I
started it for the first time in my life.

My computer locks, literally, 3 or 4 times a day and it does not come
back...just as someone else mentioned, I have to do a hard reboot
continually and I am also worried about what this is doing to the
computer itself.

Because it locks so completely, including task manager, the ability to
close it and the 'windows is checking for errors' box regarding why
internet explorer has stopped working, I end up doing a manual reboot,
which results in no reports ever being posted to my log about the
error.

I work from home using my computer and I'm more than at my wits end.

My next question that I'm thinking about is how to remove Vista from
this new Dell completely and install my old Windows XP Pro on it!

Do you think they will ever find a solution, or, since it's not even
reporting on my log, and I'm sure it's the same on others, do you think
they are even looking for one?

 

This doesn't sound like a software issue (Vista) but rather a hardware
failure. Since this is a new computer, you should contact Dell tech support
immediately for repair replacement.

As far as replacing Vista with XP, although this will do no good whatsoever
if the hardware is bad, here are general instructions:

A. On an OEM (HP, Dell, Sony, etc.) computer:

1. Go to the OEM's website and look for XP drivers for your specific model
computer. If there are no XP drivers, then you can't install XP. End of
story. If there are drivers, download them and store on a CD-R or USB
thumbdrive; you'll need them after you install XP.

2. Check with the OEM - either from their tech support website or by calling
them - to see if you will void your warranty if you do this. If you will
void the warranty, you make the decision.

3. If the OEM does support XP on the machine, call them and see if you can
have downgrade rights and have them send you an XP restore disk. This will
be far the easiest and best way of getting XP on the machine.

4. If XP is supported on the machine but the OEM doesn't have an XP restore
disk for you, understand that you'll need to purchase a retail copy of XP
from your favorite online or brick/mortar store.

5. Also understand that you will need to do a clean install of XP so if you
have any data you want, back it up first.

6. If none of the above is applicable to you because you can't run XP on
that machine (see Item #1 above), return the computer and purchase one
running XP instead.

http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html - Clean Install How-To
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Reinstalling_Windows - What
you will need on-hand

Malke

 

I have this same issue with my Dell XPS system. I called customer support,
who said I should wipe my hard drive clean, reinstall everything, then call
them back if I'm still having issue.

 

Does the suystem lock up during a spefic action or function - it it random?
Have you run the computer in Safe Mode for the same period of time?

 

I don't know about Wes's situation, but mine seems to have a will of
it's own. Sometimes it will lock up immediately after I get online and
sometimes it will work for an hour or so. I can guarantee myself that
if I try to run more than one program for very long, such as keeping my
mail and internet explorer open, and play solitaire while listening to
Windows Media or Rhapsody, it will lock and freeze pretty quickly.

I've done a lot of reading in different forums and I wish I could say
that I am the only one this is happening to, or that it was restricted
to Dell computers; but it seems to be a Vista operating system problem
that is either not being addressed by Microsoft, or is so complex that
they don't know how to fix it yet.

My son suggested buying a MAC! But I can't afford to buy anything
right now after what I've dropped for this Dell Inspiron desktop with
all it's bells and whistles!

I'm really in a quandry as to what to do, my work is not getting done
and my temper is getting shorter regarding the product they have passed
off on me.