# Who has Vista ?



## Earl Bonovich (Nov 15, 2005)

With all the chatter over the last few weeks...

I am curious on who is running Vista...

I have it on my Work Laptop for about almost a year now...
I am about to rebuild my primary PC with it... was waiting for some price drops, and other factors...

Also want to get my main system running dual monitors... so need to upgrade the card, and was looking at the NVIDIA 8800... anyone have that card?


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## convem24 (Mar 11, 2007)

Earl I have vista on a Dell XPS M1530 laptop and love it. I know everybody has been dogging it since it came out but I have no stability issues and everything I have runs it just fine. I have Vista Premium but not Ultimate.


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## Alebob911 (Mar 22, 2007)

I have it on my daughters PC that I built and all though I don't use it much, she really likes it. I have not had any issues as far as BSOD or other issues but again I don't use it much and my daughter uses it for school, internet, word and games but never any issues. I upgraded the video card to a Nvidia 6200 I believe. I'll check the specs and get back to you about them. Overall seems a worthwhile upgrade.


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## phat78boy (Sep 12, 2007)

I have been Vista running on all my machines for well over a year. I use the 64bit version on my home and work computer, 32bit on my laptop. I've yet to find anything that won't work right with Vista, but I do have Microsoft Virtual PC installed with XP just in case.

As for dual monitors, I simply can't go back. I have been using a dual monitor setup at work and home for about 3 years and it almost seems like I can't get any work done when using just one monitor now.

I can't comment on the NVIDIA card you're looking at, but I will say that ATI's 3870 cards are very good. I have 3870 with 386 MB memory at work and the 3870 X2 for home. Both are extreme performers and I couldn't be happier thus far.


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## Greg Alsobrook (Apr 2, 2007)

I upgraded to vista ultimate about a month ago... so far, so good... i'm usually an early adopter to new stuff like that... just really didn't get around to it till recently... glad I did it though... i do wish we could run it at work... but we need UPS Worldship and ICVerify (credit card processing) to be compatible...

can't help you on the nvidia card... i went with an ATI card... but I'm sure you can't go wrong with it...


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## OverThereTooMuch (Aug 19, 2006)

I'm running Vista too 



Earl Bonovich said:


> Also want to get my main system running dual monitors... so need to upgrade the card, and was looking at the NVIDIA 8800... anyone have that card?


Just to make sure, but you realize that card is serious overkill if you aren't a gamer and just want multimon, right?

It's also the previous gen card from Nvidia. The 9x00 series is the latest. The 9600 is newer, lower power, with more RAM and I think cheaper or about the same price. It doesn't perform as well in games, but if that's not your primary concern I think it's all around a better card. This isn't from personal experience, just from looking at video card reviews lately. Personally, I prefer ATI cards.

I agree with phat78boy...I could never go back to a single monitor on my main PC.


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## naijai (Aug 19, 2006)

I have 4 pc's with vista and and as OverThereTooMuch said go for the 96xx wold be better lower profile,less heat


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## B Newt (Aug 12, 2007)

I use XP. Works like a champ.


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## dettxw (Nov 21, 2007)

I have Vista on my Dell XPS420 desktop and Dell XPS M1530 laptop.

The BSOD is a daily fight on the desktop. I would hate to know just how many hours I've spent troubleshooting it, that on top of all the setup time. The harddrive churning never stops on the desktop. Maybe a few tweaks would help but I never get around to that what with just trying to get it to work at all. Everything takes longer to do with Vista. I see Linux and XP in my future.

No issues with the 8800, but then I'm not a gamer at all. The most I do is a little HD video and Blu-ray playback. When I ordered my PC it was the best video card available to be selected from the menu.

edit - and don't forget the added cost of upgrading programs that no longer work (e.g. Pinnacle Studio video editor) and replacing unsupported hardware (e.g. Epson Perfection 1200U scanner).


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## robj (Sep 1, 2007)

I'm still running a Windows XP/Solaris combo on both my laptop and the Sun Ultra 20 workstation. Vista is pricey and with it's EULA, I'd have to purchase seperate licenses for both boxes - I could find better things to spend that kind of money on - like another HD DVR


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## Michael D'Angelo (Oct 21, 2006)

My new desktop I just built has Vista Ultimate. I have another desktop and two laptops with Vista Home Premium and one old laptop with XP Pro.


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## njblackberry (Dec 29, 2007)

Have a couple of Vista machines running; work with an HP dc7800 desktop and home with a Dell XPS desktop. SP1 make it much more stable. Much. Actually had no unsupported hardware - software is another story.

I will ask at work what dual monitor video cards they use - I personally never upgraded to one.


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

I have 2 desktops and a laptop with XP and 3 fully licensed copies of Vista just awaiting their installtion on them - I've hesitated to do the install based on all the hubub about Vista's problems.

The fact that Apple is actually running a commercial stating that "Vista is still not working properly" (and has *not* being legally blocked to say that) also makes me uncomfortable to proceed. With SP1 out now, I may just go ahead anyway, but am reading about other people's experiences a bit more first.

Our company just recently certified our applications on Vista, so I suspect I'll be jumping on the bandwagon soon.


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## Capmeister (Sep 16, 2003)

I have vista on both my PC (a dual core AMD Athalon 64 6000+, with 4GB RAM, dual 250GB SATA HDD, and a NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS with 512MB GDDR3 SLI ready) and on my new Dell Inspiron Laptop. It runs fine on both and I've had no problems.

My guess is that the 8600 and 8800 cards are relatively the same. I am not right now, but WAS running dual monitors on them... worked lovely. (I just decided not to clutter my desk with two monitors since I didn't need them that much.)


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## smiddy (Apr 5, 2006)

I have Vista on two machines and am considering doing the last two, a laptop and a home built. I upgraded (if you want to call it that) from XP to Home Premium on my primary computer a older home built PC and have had no issues, in fact it seems to run far better than it did before, as far as speed of use. The other PC is an XPS One from Dell, nice machine for Mrs. Smiddy, she loves it. On it it has a TV/FM tuner and using it initially is slow, the Media Center stuff in general seems slow. I have yet to use it on my primary machine. I have not need without a TV tuner. Perhaps one day the HDPC20 will appear and I'll put it on there. 

My recommendation is do the upgrade, but make certain you have two physical hard drive, and put it on the secondary, it will create a dual boot such that you can get back to XP if you need to, this is what I did and it works great. If I have to revert back I can...but I have not reason to...though, I have yet to install Office, which I'm assuming will clog the system. I may install that this weekend.


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## Chris Blount (Jun 22, 2001)

I am running a home-built AMD 64 PC with Vista Ultimate and a NVidia 8600 (yes, I also have a iMAC). The PC runs pretty well and frame rates on games are quite good. Speed for every day tasks is acceptable. My only suggestion would be to at least have a dual core processor in the machine. Vista runs much better with the extra power.


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## reh523 (Sep 7, 2006)

I have 3 vista boxes. My main PC, a Vista MCE and a laptop (2 dells and a HP).


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## pman_jim (Jan 24, 2007)

I've been running Vista since it was in beta. I've had some issues with hardware support, but in the past 6 months everything has mostly been running smooth. 

Currently running Vista Ultimate on a Dell Latitude D830 with only minimal issues (currently fighting with a D-Link wireless card). As for dual monitors, love it. I've had no issues at all with the NVidia drivers and dual monitors.


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## Kodok (Feb 10, 2008)

I have been running Vista Ultimate on both of my desktop (one for gaming and one for file server/music or video editing/office). Vista is definitely a resource hog compares to XP, but as long as you have the correct drivers for all components, I don't have any problems as far as stability.

Regarding 8800 GT, I don't have the card personally but it gets very good reviews for price/performance ratio. Tho I heard from the first launch of 8800 GT that the card is relatively more noisy than ATI 3870. I like my ATI 3870s because they are very quiet (running CF).

I hope this helps.


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## Kodok (Feb 10, 2008)

dettxw said:


> I have Vista on my Dell XPS420 desktop and Dell XPS M1530 laptop.
> 
> The BSOD is a daily fight on the desktop. I would hate to know just how many hours I've spent troubleshooting it, that on top of all the setup time. The harddrive churning never stops on the desktop. Maybe a few tweaks would help but I never get around to that what with just trying to get it to work at all. Everything takes longer to do with Vista. I see Linux and XP in my future.
> 
> ...


One thing I noticed when I did fresh installs for XP or Vista on 3 of my Dell Laptops. Make sure when installing the Intel Chipset drivers (downloaded from Dell website), make sure there is no USB device attached (i.e. mouse, external drive, etc). I learned the hard way from my Dell XPS M1210. Dell replaced the motherboard few times and I still got weird BSOD. Until I installed fresh XP or Vista into other Dell laptops and behaved the same way.

Hopefully it helps your troubleshooting with your Dell Desktop as well.


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## cweave02 (Oct 12, 2007)

I have Vista on my Toshiba laptop (running Office 2007), and like it fine - once I found out how to turn off those annoying 'warning - you pressed the enter key: do you really want to do that?' messages that popped up every five seconds. It was just like those first PC-MAC commercials. I have XP at the office (with Office 2003), and have had some compatability / formatting issues when I bring work that I did at home back to the office.


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## DirecTV3049 (Sep 13, 2007)

Still running XP MCE on the home computer and XP pro on the work laptop.

I've read too many "horror stories" about people who "upgrade" to Vista from XP. That is, I don't want to get into *replacing* the current OS on a computer that runs fine and all my applications run on it. If I were to replace the home computer, and Vista was the only thing available, well . . . then I guess I'd switch to Vista.

I doubt that the work place is going to switch to Vista anytime soon. This is a fairly large organization. I've only been there 6 mos. now and got the "newest" laptop issued to me. From what I can tell, you get a laptop and about 3 years later, you get that replaced/upgraded. The laptops being handed out this year are still XP pro.

Dual monitors - makes work soooo much easier. We have that set up at work. At home, when I telework, I "technically" don't use it, but - effectively - I do by setting the laptop up with the VPN to work and, then, running other applications on the home PC. Sometimes, I recruit the wife's laptop and run TRIPLE. Ah, the warm glow of radiation!!


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## waynebtx (Dec 24, 2006)

Running Vista Ultimate here for about three months now so far its ok still learning .


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## tfederov (Nov 18, 2005)

I have Vista on two PCs. One came with it (my Viiv PC) and the other was from an upgrade. The upgrade was extrememly long and painful. Believe it or not though, I was on the phone with Microsoft the whole time it took to upgrade after it failed the first time and they were the ones that requested they stay onl the line! The lady was very nice and we talked about everything from Tim Horton donuts (the call center was in Canada. Guess I should call it a call cent*re* ) No real big issues after the upgrade on it.


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## Rob77 (Sep 24, 2007)

Started running Vista back in the early days of beta testing on a HP Media Center computer. Except for some problems in the early beta builds, have had no difficulties. Depending on how soon you want to switch..... think Windows 7 may be ready next year or early 2010 depending on how beta testing goes....and should correct many of "problems" with Vista


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## pete4192 (May 22, 2007)

I'm running two Acer laptops with Vista Home Premium. No problems at all. I'm also running an iMac with Vista Business running via Boot Camp and a couple virtual machines running inside OS X (Fusion running Vista Business and Parallels running Vista Home Premium and XP). No problems with anything.


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## sorahl (Oct 24, 2002)

I'm running Vista Ultimate on one machine, a beta version of Vista Home Premium on another machine. I am fairly happy with Vista, pissed about Ultimate, but like XP too.. 

That's it

John


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## dmurphy (Sep 28, 2006)

My work laptop has Vista Enterprise, and so far, so good. I don't push it that hard, but it seems stable. (Mostly Outlook, IE & stuff like that.)

At home, it's all Macs... Leopard for me. How's that iMac you bought doing?


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

Vista Business on my laptop. Took about 25 hours to get the upgrade right but it's pretty good now. It's a lot harder on the battery than XP was, and honestly even coming out of hibernate it's a lot happier if you let it sit for about 5 minutes before you start using it.


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## dave29 (Feb 18, 2007)

i have vista ultimate on my desktop and on my laptop. my desktop has the 8800. i like it and never have had any problems with vista except for printer compatibility


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## Steve615 (Feb 5, 2006)

2 HP Pavilions : 1 laptop and 1 Slimline PC,both are running with Vista Home Premium with no issues.


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## glennb (Sep 21, 2006)

Earl I have Vista Home Premium on my Toshiba Laptop and my home brew desktop PC and I've been really happy with it on both machines.


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## dharrismco (Aug 22, 2006)

My wife was running Vista 64 Ultimate on her laptop, Dual core, 2gb, and it's been working well enough. She had one software application that refuses to function on the 64 bit version of Vista though and so we got her a new system with Vista 32bit Home Premium. She'd also wanted 3gb since she was swapping quite a bit when she was doing photo editing, so it worked out for her. 

Both versions have seemed stable and responsive. The 64 bit system was about a year old and was starting to get a little sluggish, but a restore did wonders for it.


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## LarryFlowers (Sep 22, 2006)

Earl, I have lived with VIsta since the first beta release, have 1 desktop running Vista Ultimate and 1 desktop and laptop running Vista Business Enterprise. I couldn't be happier.

My primary desktop, I built myself. It has a EVGA 8800 GTS video card in in with 640MB of memory. I don't have a dual monitor setup per se... unless you consider running a 20" Dell 1680x1050 monitor and a Samsung LNT4665 simultaneously as a dual monitor setup :lol: . I do that frequently.

This years Christmas present to myself will be dual 24" monitors.

I recently switched to Intels Wolfdale 8400 3GHz chip from a 6700 2.4GHz chip. Quite a speed jump and my system operating temp dropped about 10 degrees. I recommended this chip to BMoreRavens and he used it in his new build.

I can't think of a single reason not to run Vista and on my client side I am approaching 300 PC's running Vista. If you have a legacy issue, simply install Microsoft's Virtual PC2007 (free download) and an ISO file of XP (or a disc) until your legacy issue goes away. I did this to run a netscreen VPN app that they were very slow updating to Vista.

Good Luck


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## Earl Bonovich (Nov 15, 2005)

Oh... I have no fears about running Vista... just want to get an idea of how many of us out there are running it... and it what configuration...

(But then again... I was curious about the video card, as I know mine in my desktop is a little lacking)


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## Michael D'Angelo (Oct 21, 2006)

Earl Bonovich said:


> Oh... I have no fears about running Vista... just want to get an idea of how many of us out there are running it... and it what configuration...
> 
> (But then again... I was curious about the video card, as I know mine in my desktop is a little lacking)


I just got an EVGA 8800GT and it is great.


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## lguvenoz (Aug 23, 2006)

Between myself and the family we have five computers:

2 HP Laptops with Vista Home Premium that have been pretty solid. In both cases however have had to steer clear of SP1 as the HP systems have known issues. Both have been very reliable with Office 2007 as well.

1 custom HTPC running x64 Windows Vista Ultimate. This thing has been rock solid. Very, very reliable. If you're going the HTPC route consider skipping the video card and going with one of the new AMD 780G motherboards. Includes built-in HDMI and DVI both with HDCP, and more than adequate performance to handle even BluRay.

2 other desktops both running Windows XP, and both are awful with Office 2007. I cannot tell you how many times they puke on Outlook.


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## mhayes70 (Mar 21, 2006)

I got my wife a Dell Vostro 1700 Laptop for Christmas and it came with Windows Vista. It has been running pretty smoothly. The only thing I regret right now is getting a higher powered video card in it.


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

I've been running Vista Ultimate on this computer since it came out. Paid $200 for the OEM disc from Tiger last February. This computer is 4 1/2 years old and Vista runs beautifully, once UAC is fully disabled. Compaq Presario, P4HT 3.2Ghz with 2GB of PC3200 DDR RAM. Now since the Yorkfieds are finally out, next week Monday I drop $3K on my new HP Pavilion Ultimate. Core 2 Quad at 2.83Ghz, 6GB Dual Channel 800Mhz DDR2 RAM, Vista Ultimate 64bit, and NVidia GeForce 8800 GT. I’m still in a bind, not sure if I want the 24” widescreen or dual 19”ers. Dual displays would be sweet but I might have placement issues. God I can’t wait to get this, if I had the will power I’d want another 3 months for the 3.0 Ghz Core 2 Quad, but I’ve put off this purchase for long enough, time to make good on the money I’ve had saved up since January.


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## Drew2k (Aug 16, 2006)

Running Vista Home Premium on my HP HTPC in the Office, with an ATI Radeon video card - forgot the specifics on it.

XP on my HP laptop.


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## OverThereTooMuch (Aug 19, 2006)

dettxw said:


> I have Vista on my Dell XPS420 desktop
> 
> The BSOD is a daily fight on the desktop. I would hate to know just how many hours I've spent troubleshooting it, that on top of all the setup time.


I'd be interested in finding out what steps you've already tried. I might be able to suggest a few more. For example, have you isolated it to a particular driver that's crashing? Have you submitted the memory dumps (check the Problem Reports and Solutions tool in Vista) and/or attempted to analyze them yourself to see what they point to? I'd be happy to help you with this. It might sound tough, but it's really very simple.



hdtvfan0001 said:


> The fact that Apple is actually running a commercial stating that "Vista is still not working properly" (and has *not* being legally blocked to say that) also makes me uncomfortable to proceed.


I don't think you can be legally blocked from sharing an opinion. It all depends on the exact wording of the ad. And I'd bet that Apple's lawyers go over stuff like that verrrry carefully


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## dodge boy (Mar 31, 2006)

I've got a Gateway running Vista


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## dettxw (Nov 21, 2007)

OverThereTooMuch said:


> I'd be interested in finding out what steps you've already tried. I might be able to suggest a few more. For example, have you isolated it to a particular driver that's crashing? Have you submitted the memory dumps (check the Problem Reports and Solutions tool in Vista) and/or attempted to analyze them yourself to see what they point to? I'd be happy to help you with this. It might sound tough, but it's really very simple.


I didn't take notes, but if I did there would be lots of them. How do you open those dumps anyway? 
Latest thing I did was to use Autoruns to disable some registry stuff that doesn't show up on Control Panel and I'm hopeful:
*Canon Printer drivers (bought a new combo printer/scanner since Vista doesn't support the old Epson Perfection 1200U scanner so disconnected the Canon printer)
*Sideshow AutoWake (forget why I did that)
*ATI Radeon Kernel Mode Driver (why was that there? have an nvidia card and the ATI TV tuner works without it)


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## OverThereTooMuch (Aug 19, 2006)

To analyze a memory dump on your PC:
1) Download and install the tools from here: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/default.mspx
2) Go to the Windows button on your desktop, then type "Windbg" in the start search box. When it finds the program, open it.
3) File...open crash dump and provide a path to the dump file that you want to analyze (search your hard drive for *.dmp files) and select open.
4) Doesn't matter what you click for the "workspace base" popup
5) When you open it up, you'll see something like this:

```
*******************************************************************************
*                                                                             *
*                        Bugcheck Analysis                                    *
*                                                                             *
*******************************************************************************
Use !analyze -v to get detailed debugging information.
BugCheck 9F, {3, fffffa8001c9da80, fffffa8003cde050, fffffa80023c3ab0}
***** Kernel symbols are WRONG. Please fix symbols to do analysis.
***** Kernel symbols are WRONG. Please fix symbols to do analysis.
*************************************************************************
***                                                                   ***
***                                                                   ***
***    Your debugger is not using the correct symbols                 ***
***                                                                   ***
***    In order for this command to work properly, your symbol path   ***
***    must point to .pdb files that have full type information.      ***
***                                                                   ***
***    Certain .pdb files (such as the public OS symbols) do not      ***
***    contain the required information.  Contact the group that      ***
***    provided you with these symbols if you need this command to    ***
***    work.                                                          ***
***                                                                   ***
***    Type referenced: nt!_DEVICE_OBJECT                             ***
***                                                                   ***
*************************************************************************
*************************************************************************
***                                                                   ***
***                                                                   ***
***    Your debugger is not using the correct symbols                 ***
***                                                                   ***
***    In order for this command to work properly, your symbol path   ***
***    must point to .pdb files that have full type information.      ***
***                                                                   ***
***    Certain .pdb files (such as the public OS symbols) do not      ***
***    contain the required information.  Contact the group that      ***
***    provided you with these symbols if you need this command to    ***
***    work.                                                          ***
***                                                                   ***
***    Type referenced: nt!_KPRCB                                     ***
***                                                                   ***
*************************************************************************
Probably caused by : ntkrnlmp.exe ( nt!KeSetSystemAffinityThreadEx+c99 )
```
4) Somewhere on your machine, create a directory. For the example below, I'll use a directory named d:\dump_files\websymbols
5) At the bottom of the WinDbg window, next to 0: kd>, type the following:

```
!sympath SRV*d:\dump_files\websymbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols
```
6) When that command completes, type !reload
7) When that command completes, type !analyze -v

Now the output should look something like this:

```
0: kd> !analyze -v
*******************************************************************************
*                                                                             *
*                        Bugcheck Analysis                                    *
*                                                                             *
*******************************************************************************
DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE (9f)
A driver is causing an inconsistent power state.
Arguments:
Arg1: 0000000000000003, A device object has been blocking an Irp for too long a time
Arg2: fffffa8001c9da80, Physical Device Object of the stack
Arg3: fffffa8003cde050, Functional Device Object of the stack
Arg4: fffffa80023c3ab0, The blocked IRP
Debugging Details:
------------------
*** ERROR: Symbol file could not be found.  Defaulted to export symbols for crappydriver.sys - 
DRVPOWERSTATE_SUBCODE:  3
DEVICE_OBJECT: fffffa8003cde050
DRIVER_OBJECT: fffffa8003d4ce70
IMAGE_NAME:  crappydriver.sys
DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP:  473f7dad
MODULE_NAME:  crappydriver
FAULTING_MODULE: fffff98004462000  crappydriver
DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID:  VISTA_RC
BUGCHECK_STR:  0x9F
PROCESS_NAME:  MyExe.EXE
CURRENT_IRQL:  2
LAST_CONTROL_TRANSFER:  from fffff80001c2e969 to fffff80001c4dc90
STACK_TEXT:  
fffff800`02c82da8 fffff800`01c2e969 : 00000000`0000009f 00000000`00000003 fffffa80`01c9da80 fffffa80`03cde050 : nt!KeBugCheckEx
fffff800`02c82db0 fffff800`01c4821c : fffff800`02c82ee8 fffff800`01d4a980 00000000`00000001 0000001a`cedd6579 : nt!PopCheckIrpWatchdog+0x129
fffff800`02c82e20 fffff800`01c5047c : 00001808`ef5caada 00000000`0000000c fffff800`01d4dd02 fffff800`02107320 : nt!KiTimerExpiration+0x8a2
fffff800`02c82f70 fffff800`01c4fe85 : fffff980`0054e804 fffff800`01d4a980 fffff980`1757a120 fffff800`02107320 : nt!KiRetireDpcList+0xbf
fffff800`02c82fe0 00000000`00000000 : 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 00000000`00000000 : nt!KiDispatchInterrupt+0x55
 
STACK_COMMAND:  kb
FOLLOWUP_NAME:  MachineOwner
FAILURE_BUCKET_ID:  X64_0x9F_IMAGE_ crappydriver.sys_DATE_2007_11_17
BUCKET_ID:  X64_0x9F_IMAGE_ crappydriver.sys_DATE_2007_11_17
Followup: MachineOwner
---------
```
The output of the window will generally point you at the faulty component. In my case, I've renamed it crappydriver.sys.

If you take the same quick look at a few different dump files on your machine, you'll hopefully see a pattern. If it's always the same driver, that's generally pretty solid evidence that it is the faulty component. If it always appears to be different components, then I would tend to suspect some sort of memory corruption (which can be caused by faulty hardware or a bad driver). That will be a little tougher to track down, so we'll cross that bridge if we come to it 

By the way, when you go into the "Problem Reports and Solutions" app in Vista, there's an option to view your problem history and to check for new solutions. One of the things the tool does is an analysis very similar to what's mentioned above in an attempt to find out what the offending component is.

Disabling stuff by deleting registry entries is generally not the best path to a stable machine. 

Here are a few suggestions on how to troubleshoot this further. Sorry if it seems like I'm bombarding you with questions. The answers will help me better understand the issue.

You should try going to add/remove programs to remove the old software that you don't want (like the Epson scanner stuff).

Is there any pattern that you can notice to when you hit the BSOD? 
Examples:
a) Are you playing a game, using an app that puts a lot of load on any particular resource (memory/video/net/storage)?
b) Does it only happen on power management events (like when your machine has been idle for > 30 minutes)?

Do you have the latest video drivers?

Have you tried running a diagnostic test on your RAM? (http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp)

Do you have all of the latest updates from Windows Update, including SP1?


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## blackcat77 (Dec 26, 2007)

Vista Home Premium on our two desktops and a laptop. My computer is mainly gaming and graphics while my wife uses hers for the home office with productivity software like Office. The laptop is for my wife's business trips and for web surfing from the La-Z-Boy the rest of the time. 

It's not perfect -- no OS will ever be -- but it's at least as good as XP in my experience. We got it for the desktops on the day it came out and there were the well-known driver issues for about a month or so. The only real casualty for me was that I finally gave up on my X-Fi soundcard when Creative simply could not get it right, but I got Audigys for both computers and they work perfectly.

That said, I am looking forward to Windows 7 because it's supposed to be modular rather than trying to be everybody's everything all at once which does require a pretty stout system to run properly.

But especially since SP1, Vista is very stable and the old driver issues are finished. No need to fear...


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## gitarzan (Dec 31, 2005)

Vista Home Premium has been very stable for me. 

If you want to build a budget Blu Ray HD/DVD system for under $800 that is quiet, looks great, HDMI, and sleeps without issues... Get a with a motherboard with the AMD 780G chipset (DX10, hdmi audio, etc) , LG BluRay HD DVD combo drive (about $170), Hauppauge HVR-950 usb tuner stick (two if you like), this low profile case for about 50 buks (HEC 7K09), two gb of quality gskill memory, 500+ gb SATA hard disk. I also use the AMD 5000+ Brisbane CPU for about $85. I would also consider the lower power 45w Athlon X2 4450e CPU for about $80. You can get a very nice 'green button' media center remotes for about $30. The on board video has hardware accelleration and is more then sufficient for HD and not bad for gaming (or for more money add second video card for an ATI crossfire config). I've built a couple of these and they work great.


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## JcT21 (Nov 30, 2004)

im dual booting xp pro and vista home premium. athlon 64 4000, nvidia 8400, 3gb ram.

i like vista, i rarely use xp anymore.


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## kokishin (Sep 30, 2006)

Just sent you a PM.



Earl Bonovich said:


> With all the chatter over the last few weeks...
> 
> I am curious on who is running Vista...
> 
> ...


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## Gus (Dec 19, 2007)

I have been running Vista Ultimate on my Dell XPS 410 (desktop) since it was new March a year ago. It is my main machine because it is in the room that I prefer to be in my house. I do a little music handling, picture handling, and a lot of surfing...yeah, real important stuff, huh. I have another desktop with XP on it and it also has old Office 2000. I prefer it to my Dell, but maybe I am not being objective, because I always like the computer I put together over the computer I bought outright.

I consider Vista overkill but have had no problems with it. The part I dislike about it is I was very familiar with XP and knew where everything was. The same stuff is there in Vista but the route to get to it is a bit cluttered, a bit camoflaged. I dislike that about it...call it uneconomical compared to XP with new names for old stuff, too many clicks to get there.

Sort of like the differences between the old Microsoft Office versions versus the newer ones. Each one gets a bit more cluttered with BS. Gate's stuff used to be very intuitive...not so much anymore. I am an engineer and was always confident that I could figure anything out, and usually could, and I liked that about the early versions of Windows, but it seems to me that some of the reasons that I liked his stuff are no longer there, maybe I am just getting older, or maybe Gates's bunch is trying to appeal to the artsy-xartsy crowd too much. 

My considered opinion is knowing that Vista is a real resources hog that the usual advise might apply moreso with Vista than it did with previous OS upgrades. If you are upgrading like a two or three year old machine, it might be a mistake. If your machine is only a year old and was close to cutting edge when you got it, you will probably be okay, assuming the computer you have was not two year's obsolete when you first got it. Many certainly are.

And last but not least, ATI has always been the leader in graphics cards for work involving two monitors and in my opinion they still are, although they have excellent gaming cards now as well. Another consideration is whether your MoBo supports AGC cards(old) versus PCI Express cards (new). The PCI Express MoBo's are mobetta. Be careful that you buy the right one; if you don't you will be pxxxed when your new graphics card arrives and it is the wrong one. Another thing about graphics cards is some have outputs that are more cutting edge than others, be careful there as well. You might have to buy other stuff to be able to plug in to your monitor or your HDTV with the resolution you desire.

On upgrades, I always lean heavily to a MoBo/Memory/Processor upgrade when considering a step like you are considering, and of course that is essentially a new computer. But it is SOOOO much fun to put one together! Even great gaming machines can be put together for under 1000 bucks. I am doing it right now. Good old Newegg!


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## daniellee (Jun 15, 2006)

I run the following in my home & home office:
Main production PC - Vista
2nd production PC - XP
Backup server - W2K
Wife's PC - Vista
Experimental PC - dual boot Vista & Ubuntu​
I like Vista but it forced me to have to spend money to upgrade a couple of application (Quickbooks & MS Money). Also couldn't stand all the UAC pop-ups so I disabled UAC. Now with SP1 it seems a little faster than XP.


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## jhs33 (Dec 24, 2006)

I am running Vista Business sp1 and have an ATI x850 video card. Working fine so far.


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## daniellee (Jun 15, 2006)

Earl Bonovich said:


> .... Also want to get my main system running dual monitors...


Dual monitors are great. You will immediately become addicted to them and soon start thinking about adding a third. A good combination is a 22" wide screen flanked by two 19" non-wide screens because the vertical resolution on the 22" & 19" monitors are almost the same (22" = 1024 & 19" = 1050). Be sure that you can adjust the heights so you can get an even panorama. I am using an NVIDIA 8600 in a true PCIe x 16 slot & an NVIDIA 8400 in a PCIe x 16 slot that is really only x 4 (don't notice any speed differance but I'm not into gaming).


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## Mike Bertelson (Jan 24, 2007)

I have Vista on my Dell laptop (Inspiron 1521).

Mike


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## pogo (Oct 31, 2007)

OverThereTooMuch said:


> I'm running Vista too
> I agree with phat78boy...I could never go back to a single monitor on my main PC.


To answer the original question -- I have one PC running vista -- It's the Media center machine. I have two notebooks that were delivered with vista and regenned with XP. (Not a trivial task these days -- if you want to put another OS on a store bought machine the guy who sold it to you couldn't care less. (Dell actually told me it would void the warranty if I put a different OS on it -- after some really heated discussion they admitted that they simply wouldn't support me, but of course the hardware warranty would still apply.) WRT dual monitors -- although two of my machines support them, I find that I'm more of a multiple PC's on one monitor guy than multiple monitors on one PC. Turns out I can only look at one at a time.

Oops, almost forgot the only real issue I have with Vista is that it won't allow me to backup to a linux server. Kind of a big deal since I've spent a lot of time ripping vinyl LPs to the machine, and would hate to lose all that work for a failed HD. Currently searching for a solution.


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## RobertE (Jun 10, 2006)

Two Vista boxes here, Vista Home Basic on both.

One is a low end Acer laptop used for HughesNet installations. So it sees a lot of travel. Not a single issue with Vista.

The other is a home built desktop. All new parts at build time. No issues that weren't caused by me. The desktop is always at 100% load doing distributed computing under BOINC. It's a C2D machine.

Much like my HR2xs, Vista just plain works for me.


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## gulfwarvet (Mar 7, 2007)

i'm currently running Vista Home on my laptop and have Vista ultimate edition on my desktop.

both PC's has the ATI video card.


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## TomF (Sep 20, 2006)

I have Vista on three computers. I built my desktop in Feb 2006 and it runs Ultimate 32-bit. I have a MSI nVidia GeForce 8600GTS OC in that computer and I've never had a problem with it. It has a Windows Experience Index of 5.3 (for the processor, an Intel dual-core 6600) with the graphics getting a 5.9 out of 5.9.

I bought my wife a HP Pavilion dv2312 notebook for our anniversary in April last year and it runs Home Premium Edition 32-bit. It has a lower-end AMD processor in it and she had a fair amount of problems with it, mostly with networking, but it's been pretty stable for awhile.

I just replaced my XP notebook in February with a HP Pavilion dv6000t Special Edition notebook that came with Vista Home Premium and I upgraded it to Ultimate 32-bit. It has a nVidia GeForce 8400M GS with 256MB discrete memory. It has a Windows Experience Index of 3.4 and the graphics is the weak link here, with the processor, an Intel T7500 @ 2.2 GHz scoring a 5.1. I've had a few minor problems with it, but nothing that hasn't been resolved.

Both the desktop and my notebook have been upgraded to SP1 with absolutely no problem through Microsoft Update. On my wife's notebook it hasn't shown up yet.

Overall, I'm pleased with Vista except that it takes forever to boot up.

Haven't read all the posts in this thread but be aware that Vista 32-bit will only recognize 3GB of RAM, you need 64-bit to use 4GB of RAM.


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## sanborn13 (Dec 23, 2006)

Vista Ultimate on my PC, Business on my laptop and workstation at work. Had some issues originally with the home PC but removed all unnecessary hardware and it went away. I think it was my modem that was causing the problem and I had not used it for years so why keep it in there.

No other issues and I have not found any programs that would not run on Vista that did run on XP. Overall a good experience.


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## Doug Brott (Jul 12, 2006)

I've got Vista Ultimate 32-bit running on my Core 2 6600. I just bumped the memory from 2GB to 4GB a couple of weeks back and it might be time to upgrade the Video card from an nVidia 7900 to an 8800.


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## Pinion413 (Oct 21, 2007)

I have Vista Ultimate 64-bit running on a Core 2 Duo E6750 with 4GB of RAM and a 512MB 8600GT. I've been using it casually since Beta 1, and pretty much exclusively for the better part of a year now. It's dual-booted with XP Professional, but I rarely ever use XP anymore. 

Vista suits me just fine. :grin:


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

Officedepot has a sale on an ACER computer with Vista Home Premium, 2gb, 320gb, Gig ethernet, yada, yada for $350 (after mail-in rebate). I think the sale ends tomorrow (but has shown up a couple times now.)

I'm planning on adding an Nvdia 8800GT, a bigger power supply, and probably more ram. 
Compusa has EVGA Nvidia 8800GT for $160 (after rebate)
4GB of ram for $50 (after rebate)
700W powersupply for $80
And I might add Blu-ray player for $200 (or just wait.)

Happy shopping 
Tom


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## Tyrnal (Mar 21, 2008)

Been running Vista Home Premium for a few months. Working very well.

Pentium 4 3GHz
nVidia GeForce 8500GT
1GB of DDR 667 OCZ S.O.E RAM
hoping to pick up another 2GB of RAM soon


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## Skates (Apr 15, 2004)

I'm running Vista on my newest PC - it's an HP Pavilion. I also run XP on a Compaq laptop and an older Compaq desktop - all three are networked.

I've had a few minor issues but they have been fairly easy to correct. The only thing I am really pi$$ed about is, there's no compatible driver for my ten-year-old HP laser printer - and it's a great printer. I use it for all of my large print jobs when I don't want to waste ink on my inkjet printer.

So, I just left it connected to the XP desktop and print remotely.


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