Is Vista64 stable? What's your uptime?

[uptime]

Hi. I'm starting to get quite into PC gaming, and thinking of buying an OEM Vista64 Home Premium. The only thing is I do a lot of seeding (legal).

So my question is - How stable is Vista64? What kind of uptimes have you had personally? All my drivers are compatible so will I be O.K?

Many thanks, Mark.

 

[Brink]

Welcome to the forum Mark,

I have had my up to two weeks. It would be longer if it was not for the restarts with driver and Windows Updates. Vista x64 has been real stable for me.

Shawn

 

[z3r010]

Hi Mark and welcome to the forums

For me Vista x64 is rock solid, the only time the PC reboots is when an M$ update requires it.

I am not a gamer so I cant give my opinion on gaming, there are issues with some games but not that many as I understand it.

 

[MaraST78]

Hi there.

It all really comes down to what u do with your system. If u use it for day-to-day tasks and u don't play latest games, u will be fine.

Sure, Vista it's still not so mature in general and there are some small glitches, but nothing terrible. I have done everything what i could think of to bring it down. Well I succeded once, but that was expected There are ways of getting Vista (and every other OS for that matter) to its knees, but that's just fault of the end user

So, as i said, if u don't play latest and very demanding games, u'll be fine.
It's not a problem of these games, but again, drivers are not so mature too, especially x64 ones.

I also play latest games, not so much, but i have been lately 'cos of new HW. Latest nvidia 163.11 beta are performing perfectly in everything i play including: Stalker, Quake4, Prey, Doom3, FEAR, HL2 and others. I had problems with Stalker and latest official 162.22. That's it, I sometime play older ones too, these are also perfect. But i t doesn't mean that u can't have problems, i can't play everything out there It will only get better. ATi drivers are a bit worse..

And if u set atomatic updates to just inform about them instead of downloading and installing them automaticaly, ur uptime can be enormous

 

[uptime]

Hi. Thank you very much for the replies. So seems stable enough then.

I've never left any of my computers on for longer than about 100 days anyways (powercuts etc...) but it's nice to know.

Also, one more thing. If I buy Vista OEM it will be tied to whatever motherboard I buy, yes? So I will be able to reinstall as many times as I want, like with a pre-installed Dell or something?

Many thanks, Mark. (Sorry for all the questions.)

 

[Brink]

Mark,

Yes, you will be able to install the Vista OEM as many times as you like to the same motherboard. Just make sure that the OEM computer actually comes with a Vista installation CD/DVD and not just on a seperate hard drive partition.

Shawn

 

[uptime]

Mark,

Yes, you will be able to install the Vista OEM as many times as you like to the same motherboard. Just make sure that the OEM computer actually comes with a Vista installation CD/DVD and not just on a seperate hard drive partition.

Shawn

Excellent.

I'm buying the PC custom built w/o OS and buying the OEM copy separately, so I'll have the disk.
Hopefully I will see you all around the forums. I look forward to contributing - when I know enough. (Might take a while, I haven't used Windows for about 6 years now, lots to learn.)

Many thanks, Mark.

 

[geekmd]

Careful with 64 ultimate. A few installation caveats.

First - do not try to install with more than 2 GB RAM - look for a hotfix after you install your OS - run the hotfix, then you can add as much more RAM as you want.

Second. Don't try to install OS with dual cars in SLI already connected. Start with one card - get the system installed, do NOT let windows install your VGA drivers - go to the website and install them there. Then you can add a second card.

I am on my 3rd reinstall in a week - had it up and running for about 12 hrs with 4GB and dual 8800 GTX - but then I started getting a driver failure error (its posted all over the nvidia forums if you are interested) than caused frequent hang-ups.

I wish you luck - but 64-bit is not yet ready for primetime I think. I will be reinstalling and then making my system a dual-boot with my old XP until the 64-bit support gets up to snuff.

 

[uptime]

Careful with 64 ultimate. A few installation caveats.

First - do not try to install with more than 2 GB RAM - look for a hotfix after you install your OS - run the hotfix, then you can add as much more RAM as you want.

Second. Don't try to install OS with dual cars in SLI already connected. Start with one card - get the system installed, do NOT let windows install your VGA drivers - go to the website and install them there. Then you can add a second card.

I am on my 3rd reinstall in a week - had it up and running for about 12 hrs with 4GB and dual 8800 GTX - but then I started getting a driver failure error (its posted all over the nvidia forums if you are interested) than caused frequent hang-ups.

I wish you luck - but 64-bit is not yet ready for primetime I think. I will be reinstalling and then making my system a dual-boot with my old XP until the 64-bit support gets up to snuff.

Hope it's not the same with home Premium because my system is shipping with 4GiB. (One of the main benefits of 64bit is being able to address more than 3.5/4.0GiB of RAM.)

As for 64bit not being ready for primetime, I've been running a 64bit kernel for about 2 years now. Never had any problems, not even with Flash/Firefox. You only really see a benefit when you /encode/transcode music/video though. e.g ripping a DVD.

 

[MaraST78]

Hmm, the 4GB problem was not a problem for me, but can be for others. As far as I know, it doesn't affect all systems. Look here: Error message when you try to install Windows Vista on a computer that uses more than 3 GB of RAM: "STOP 0x0000000A"

 

[geekmd]

When I say not ready for primetime - I mean for mass consumption and ease of use.:D

If your system comes with vista pre-installed you are fine with >3GB Ram - just letting you know about some EXTREMELY common install problems before you start - if you are installing the OS yourself.

Since my reinstall - things have been fine for 3 days - with SLI and 4GB RAM running - just waiting for the nv, and my attempt to make a dual-boot system failed. I think maybe my drive letters are squirrely so I am going to do a little more research before trying again.

If you are running SLI - look up this error code on the Nvidia forums - it was what forced me to do my re-install of Vista64. "[SIZE=-1]nvlddmkm" - is a recurrent driver failure that has no reliable fix and has been widely reported for months.

Good luck.
[/SIZE]

 

[uptime]

When I say not ready for primetime - I mean for mass consumption and ease of use.:D

If your system comes with vista pre-installed you are fine with >3GB Ram - just letting you know about some EXTREMELY common install problems before you start - if you are installing the OS yourself.

Since my reinstall - things have been fine for 3 days - with SLI and 4GB RAM running - just waiting for the nv, and my attempt to make a dual-boot system failed. I think maybe my drive letters are squirrely so I am going to do a little more research before trying again.

If you are running SLI - look up this error code on the Nvidia forums - it was what forced me to do my re-install of Vista64. "[SIZE=-1]nvlddmkm" - is a recurrent driver failure that has no reliable fix and has been widely reported for months.

Good luck.
[/SIZE]

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound "off" or anything. It's just that with my Operating System I had to copy and paste 2 commands, one for codecs the other for encrypted DVD playback, and run one script to setup flash for 64bit Firefox. (How's that for ease of use. ) So I think you mean Windows64 isn't ready for primetime yet. But what can you do if you want to game on vista with loads of RAM?

I really, really hope I don't get any of these errors though. I wont be having SLI so thats O.K, but the RAM thing scares me a bit. - That's the whole idea of 64bit - more RAM.

 

[geekmd]

No sweat . You can RUN Vista64 with more than 3 GB RAM - you just can't INSTALL it. You have to install it with less than 3 GB - I would do 2GB to be safe. Then you install a hotfix available from Microsoft to fix the bug, restart your system, and you can add as much RAM as you want after that and it will all work fine.

Another suggestion. I believe the nvdlkkm error may be due to a bad early install of Nvidia drivers that can't be erased with subsequent updates. I would recommend when you install your system that you refuse to let windows do any driver installs, and turn OFF automatic updates until you have a chance to download the latest drivers from the vendors. That vieo driver error is not just for SLI - it even occurs with the 7000 series of Nvidia cards - and I have seens reports of ATI cards doing similar things.

For my new install - I did all my driver installs manually - not through Windows Update, and it has worked like a charm.

So in summary:
1 - do not try to install Vista64 with more than 2 GB RAM - add it later after doing hotfixes and updates.
2 - do NOT let Windows download drivers, and check your updates before installing so it doesn't sneak them in with the big initial update.
3- before installing ANYTHING - do these three hotfixes from Microsoft.
- Microsoft Hotfix 929777 (4GB RAM memory addressing problem)
- Microsoft Hotfix 938194 (General compatibility fix)
- Microsoft Hotfix 938979 (Overall performance update)

4 - After those hotfixes, you can add RAM until the cows come home, and you can download and install your video and sound card drivers and install them. If you don't do it in this order - there is a really good chance you will have lots of problems - like I did - but now - everything appears to be fine (knocks on wood)

 

[MaraST78]

Not really. I can easily install with all 4GB installed with no problems. It affects many systems, but not all. Next problem is the mobo. I just don't need to overclock anything, so I went for directly Intel board, works absolutely flawlessly. Yes, it's not as "fancy and colorful" like other, mainly Taiwanese boards, but who need it anyway? I got everything i need, RAID and Firewire included.

So, try with all 4GB first, if it BSOD on you, then remove the 2 gigs, but it's not necessary to do it if you don't know if you are one of the "badly chosen"

from M$ site about KB929777:

This problem occurs if the following conditions are true: •The computer uses more than 3 GB of RAM.•The computer uses a storage system that is running the Storport miniport driver. •The computer uses a controller that uses 32-bit direct memory access (DMA).
Well i'm only guessing here, but i'm probably not using storport. Maybe it's being used with RAID or AHCI setup. My SATA is set to IDE emulation mode. No problem, since NCQ usually only decreases HDD performance anyway

Also, if you install 938979, RivaTuner (among others) will not work anymore, because it needs driver signing to be turned off. This update changes the way signing is being used and there is no way of disabling it with the update, yet. So my 8800GTS is now unecesarilly hot, 'cos i can't control the fan, but it's still safe.

 

[geekmd]

Thanks for the info. I definitely had the BSOD on initial boot-up (was expecting it though - just had to see if it would happen) and again on re-install.

I am curious about the driver-signing issue as well - is it possible to turn that function off after installing the hotfix - or would I need to uninstall the hotfix?

Also - can you recommend a program to control fan speeds of CPU, one case fan (side fan blowing on the GPUs) and the 8800 GTX cards? I haven't gotten around to attempting one yet - but would like to know if there is a reliable one before I start the trial and error process.

Thanks again,

Craig

 

[MaraST78]

As far as i know, there is no way of disabling diver signing with update installed, uninstall of update is necesary. But maybe someone found a way already, search Guru3D forums, Rivatuner section. Unwinder (creator of RT) said, that he can't do anything about it and he will not pay 500$ for a year just to sign RT, it will stay unsigned, unless RT is making some profit.

As for the fan control software, i used RT just to control my 8800GTS fan plus other minor D3D and OGL settings. Nvidia ntune is supposed to have this capability too, but unfortunatelly, the area with fan control is greyed out in Vista I didn't try Ati tool, maybe it will work, but i really don't know. I also tried Speedfan (for a different reason), but it's just not recognizing anything in my system, doesn't work. But RT works great if u don't have that damn update

That's it, hope it helps.

 

[Dj Spiel]

Vista x64 is quite stable for me...again my setup is simple and their are x64 drivers for all my stuff.

Supreme Commander,Half-Life 1,2,Lost coast,CSS,Madden 2008,Company Of heroes all play great. It's having trouble understanding my batch file for my daily backup to server...I am asuuming this is a Vista thing because on Xp it ran fine.

Other than that runs smooth...I run dreamscene, Dual monitors no lag at all.
Download,Office 2003,Web browsing,moving files all fast... some programs like AIM 6 tend to take a while to go to "settings" not sure if this is a aim thing or vista x64 thing.

Hope this helps (please do reserach make sure your motherboard has good support)

Hi. I'm starting to get quite into PC gaming, and thinking of buying an OEM Vista64 Home Premium. The only thing is I do a lot of seeding (legal).

So my question is - How stable is Vista64? What kind of uptimes have you had personally? All my drivers are compatible so will I be O.K?

Many thanks, Mark.