My Vista story...

Hello all,

I decided to take the plunge into Vista last week. First things first, it is kind of working now. I feel like my computer has a set of crutches right now, but after some time healing, I think all will be smoothed out... eventually.

System:
EVGA nForce 680i SLI mainboard
nVidia 8600 GT videocard
Mushkin 2x2GB DDR2 chips
2x300GB WD SATA drives (not RAIDED) one drive is for backups, the other is for current projects and OS

I work at a design firm and do a lot of Flash development, design and video projects. So, at the time I got this machine, it was more than enough to get the job done.

There were some issues that became troubling around a month ago. Sometimes, if I would do a test render in After Effects CS3, the machine would instantly bluescreen and restart. Bam. Even though I would save very, very often, sometimes the last file I was working on would become corrupt. Sometimes 3 hours of work would end up in the toilet.

I was fed up with the driver issues with my videocard and XP, so I decided to take a chance and see if Vista fared any better. I asked for a Mac to do work with Final Cut, but that was shot down.

Anyhoo, in steps Vista Ultimate x64. I booted and ran the initial install. Then, the first restart. Blue Screen... Okay, I haven't even seen the desktop yet, and the machine is bluescreening. Tried to install again, using the board manufacturers Vista x64 SATA controller drivers. Blue screened again. After about three hours of this, I found on a forum somewhere that installing with over 2GB of RAM in the slots might cause this. Why?! I swapped some RAM from another machine since I had 2x2GB chips and really couldn't take one out.

Installer went fine. I saw the desktop for the first time. I patched the system as much as I could and installed all the correct drivers. I then installed Adobe Master Collection CS3 (that took a large chunk out of my day) and proceeded to get to work on a video project that had been looming over me.

Then, the best part. None, and I mean none of my videos would play. I would open it in Quicktime (yeah I know it sucks, but a lot of my videos are MP4s) it would play a few frames then crash. Premiere Pro would not allow me to view or edit any videos. Even Squeeze wouldn't encode for me. All the time, Vista kept throwing a "Windows Export Manager has stopped responding" error that I couldn't find any information about.

So here I am. I have found that some files will correctly play, but not all of them. Of course AVIs work, but a good amount of QuickTime videos just give up. I can do some of the work, but not all of it.

I know it wasn't the best idea to switch. Why fix something that isn't broken? Well it kind of was, but not enough to change OS's. See what frustration with the old can do? It only leads to more frustration with the new.

I will keep investigating the problems, I just hope that I don't lose too much work over it.

Hello rocco44, sorry to hear your having so much trouble.

For starters yes, installing Vista with more then 2GB of RAM has been known to cause issues. Reduceing the amount to 2GB usually corrects the problem, and the other 2GB can be added after the OS is patched. If you ran windows update you should have gotten the patch automaticly. If you dont there is another tread here that can direct you to its download location.

Second. The 680i chipset has been reported to have issues with Vista. Why! Your guess is as good as mine. I would see if you can locate a bios update from EVGA or nvidia one.

Third, your playback problems should be correctable by installing the klite codec pack. Its free and there are both x86 and x64 versions. A google search should be short.

Also see if you can get a Vista disk with service pack 1 already slipstreamed into it. Microsoft sent me one(unexpectedly) with a product key. I got freinds at MS but I really didnt expect that. I now have about 25 Vista product keys rangeing from home premium through businnes to ultimate I dont even need. Anyway after I got the disk I installed Vista ultimate x64 with more then 2 GB of RAM installed and no problems.

If you have your product key(and I'm sure you do) see if you can get a sp1 disk.

Good luck and keep us posted.