Vista - New to Vista and Frustrated

hey guys, first post.

i just bought vista x64, home premium sp1, and it's been nothign but hassle.

i have been working with / repairing xp systems for 6 years now, there is not much that gets me on xp systems... vista however is different.

i setup the system about 2 weeks ago, with new parts. the video card was backordered, so i used a 7600gt i had laying around instead. everything installed fine. i hadn't really used it, so yesterday when i recieved the other card, i thought i knew what to do. the new card is an ati hd2600, so i uninstalled the drivers for nvidia, changed out the cards, and it would freeze as soon as i could see the desktop everytime windows started.

so i reformated. easy, as i had nothing on the system anyways.

installed the ati card, worked fine. all the drivers back in, worked fine. now i am trying to install some programs, freezes everytime. one is nero 8, one is powerpoint viewer 2007.

is there anything that works properly with x64? what benefits does x64 have? i haven't seen ANY yet... thanks for your time.

Hi, schroederman, and welcome to the forums.

Just to give you an idea, I have been working on and repairing WIndows systems since Windows 3.11 (WFW). I have no issues using my nVidia card on Vista x64, but I am not going ot harangue you about which card to buy - even Tom's hardware guide says the 4870 is a better buy than the gt260-based cards.

When you reformatted, was the nVidia card still in there? because it sounds like you reformatted and installed Vista, and then installed the ATI card....

Can you give us more detailed system specs, including bus type for the video cards, CPU type, etc?

sorry, i guess i assumed you all know what i'm thinking...

i had uninstalled the software, shut down, power off. took out the nvidia card, put in the ati card, started it up, and installed software. or partially installed, until it froze.

then i reformated, and reinstalled, and the ati software worked. but nothing else did.

the motherboard is a gigabyte ga-m57sli-s4, video card is lut technologies or soemthing, powercolor hd2600. no idea what bus is, sorry, i could probably look it up, but i wouldn't knwo what to list here. ram is ocz gold 2x1gb, hdd is seagate sataII 32m 500gb.

i ran memtestx86 tonight, seatools, spinrite, etc. everything they found was perfect hardware wise.

should i just sell it and buy vista x32? it seems all the software out there is made for 32 bit systems. i can't find burning software that will work properly, or a powerpoint viewer (it's a media system for our church, so this is important...)

Burning software that works in Vista x64:

Burn at once
ISO Creator
Nero
Built in burning wizard
WiMP

PowerPoint Viewer from Microsoft works just fine in Vista x64 on my system with and without PowerPoint installed.

Honestly, I would ring up Microsoft on this issue - I am not sure if your installation disc is gone south or if it is something else. I just wanted to originally verify that you have the ATI card installed when you formatted and installed Vista again.

Could be a driver issue - try going to your video card manufacturers site and download and install their x64 drivers. It's worth doing this again even if that's what you did first time. You can always check if the card is causing the problem as follows :click Start then type msconfig in search box, right click msconfig and run as administrator.Then click selective startup. Click the Boot tab then check the Base video box, apply and OK. Your next reboot will use only the onboard video card-if you are able to install programs etc. then you know your video card is the problem. Be aware vista may uninstall your video card software when you boot having selected base video. For normal operation you need to uncheck base video again, of course. Hope that helps.

FWIW: MSCONFIG always runs as administrator....

how do i ring up microsoft?

i downloaded teh ati drivers for the video card a second time, always freezes while either a) unpacking or b) installing, before the progress bar is 3/4 ways. restart.

now it's trying to install the 2 part pack, part #1. it's freezing, then moves a bit, then freezes, then moves for a bit. cpu usage is at 99%, memory at 702mb. mouse is choppy.

the board drivers installed perfectly. is it a video card issue then? it's frustrating the @()#$(#@ out of me. i've done this 100 times on xp, never this many different problems.

the cpu usage is at 50-52% and still slow/choppy. it seems frozen, as the mouse doesn't move, but then the 'status' bar advances a little every minute or so.

i'm detecting fail in the video card sector?

Add / remove the video drivers
Get a driver cleaner to remove ATI / Nvidia drivers from the OS.
Disable UAC in Vista
Reboot
Download a clean copy of the video drivers
Install them

Turn on UAC once you get it working.

Add / remove the video drivers
Get a driver cleaner to remove ATI / Nvidia drivers from the OS.
Disable UAC in Vista
Reboot
Download a clean copy of the video drivers
Install them

done and done... or tried... it would freeze every time i tried to install the drivers. either still while it was unpacking to the ati folder, or just after it started actually installing.

i tried installing nero 8, brand new, out of the box, and it also froze. uac still off.

installing xp pro sp2 now...