Problems with Ultimate 64bit

[fpoon]

Hi, I'm a new user of Vista and new to this forum.

Have a few problems with vista:
1. when I play games (quake4) and watch dvds, every now and again (more often with games, sometimes with dvds) the screen freezes and I have to reboot by reset button (nothing else work). As my PC is new, I don't know whether it's a hardware or software problem.

2. I have MS Office 2003 loaded, and again the Word would stop responding every so often and sometimes it restarts, sometimes it doesn't.

3. Finally, a few programs, especially catalyst, would stop working as soon as boot up is completed, but again, this happens only at times. To top it off, sometimes vista will reboot itself automatically, as if I pressed the reset button.

I've checked Bios updates from Asus, and while there are newer updates, they don't seem to be for the problems I'm having, and my realtek driver is the latest version (I've compared my version to what's on Asus' site)

Please any help would be much appreciated on any of the topics above.
Cheers

 

[SCSIraidGURU]

What are your specs? Which video card and driver set? Did you upgrade Office 2003 to all the service packs and patches? What DVD software? If your software is old, upgrade it to a Vista capable version. Don't run older software if you can afford to upgrade. Office 2007 runs great in x64. Catalyst can be a pain on any OS. If games lock up, check your voltages and temperatures. Do you overclock? x64 OS don't overclock very well.

 

[fpoon]

Hi, my specs are:

AMD 8750,
Asus M3A78-T mobo,
4Gbs Ram,
Sapphire HD4670 VGA,
Corsair 620HX PSU
Samsung 22x DVD writer

I think the Office has the latest stuff, as I have microsoft update turned on automatically, and I can see patches in my programs folder.
DVD is played on windows media player, version 10 I think, the one that comes with vista.
I do not overclock, and everything in bios is pretty much set to auto.

BTW, what is the real use of Catalyst? I thought of it as a video monitor for VGA cards, but as I've found (though not of my own choosing) when the program shuts down by itself, it doesn't make any difference to my video settings or even change the screen one bit.

 

[rive0108]

Vista attempts an auto-reboot when Windows crashes, and this can be caused by anything including hardware failure.

You might want to reinstall Windows if you are having that many program/Windows component Failures. See if that resolves your issues.
In any event, If it is software it is most likely due to Windows file corruption, and can result in catastrophic Windows Failure. I would Backup all your data while you still have the chance.

 

[GeneralEclectic]

You might want to try running memtest86 (latest version 2.11 from Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool ) for (I'm serious) at least 24 hours. I recently built one machine that was experiencing behavior like this that I simply couldn't figure out. Memtest would pass the first five or ten cycles, but eventually it would find a failure after as much as 36 hours. Raising memory and core voltage finally got it to run 48 hours without a failure. Windows worked okay on it after that.

Close the machine up and put it in a warm environment if you can too to raise the probability of finding problems.

 

[nelsonsdavis]

Swap out the memory. Better yet, check your motherboard spec's and make sure the memory voltage the board puts out supports your memory. As someone suggested, you could up the voltage (if your board supports this) up a notch and see what happens.

Catalyst, you have an ATI card, catalyst are the drivers, sounds like there resetting themselves, it crashes, resets the video. Could be your power supply? Anyway, how many sticks of memory are you using?

Did you build this PC, or is it bought from a manufacturerer like HP?

Have you been having this problem since day one? Is the video card new? If you have two sticks of memory in the PC, remove one, and see what happens. No change, put the other one back in, take out the other one and observe changes.

Download and run CCleaner, run the registry cleaner in CCleaner also.

Anyways, sounds like memory or power supply to me. Easiest thing to do is check the memory a stick at a time. Oh, are both memory sticks the same?

And on and on..............

 

[nelsonsdavis]

Oh, the comment about x64 not liking over clocking, nonsense. I'm running an intel core 2 duo e6750 (2.66 ghz) overclocked at 3.8 ghz for a year without a hickcup. Corsair 8500 memory, 2 sticks of 2 gig each, asus motherboard, etc. Oh, hey, is your system over heating? Have you checked the CPU fan recently? All the dust blown out? Also, look at the window "event viewer" to check for any problems, try to pinpoint there what may be happening. Again, probably memory or Power supply. And on and on..........and I'm running x64 ultimate.

 

[fpoon]

Thanks people, I'll check the memory and see what happens.
This is a new pc I put together myself; thought I'll give it a go since my last self-built system worked pretty well. I have 2x2Gb Ballistix rams at 800Mhz,and with the specs I'm using, there shouldn't be a problem with my Corsair 620W PSU, after all, I don't have any really power hungry hardware. system temp is at 47 degrees and CPU temp is 42.