Vista - 3D gaming ok in XP, but crash in Vista ?

I`ve bought an HD3870 with an ASUS M2A-MX, Athlon 64 X2 4000+, 2Gb DDR2,
Vista Ultimate and a 500W heavy duty Powersupply just to play CoD4 (I know,
insane...)
I`ve having trouble from the start, two months ago like crashing, freezing,
hanging and VPU recovers trying to play that game. Also does all of the above
with 3DMark06 and other heavy 3D-games. I`ve reinstalled Vista 4 times to try
out new tricks and fixes I`ve found on forums on the net. And indeed tried
virtually every trick, tweak and possible fix there is to find on the net.
Yesterday I`ve reinstalled my old XP to see if this would help. Conpletely
updated it and installed CoD4.
The damn game works! No sudden black screens or reboots.
So, is there perhaps a glitch in Vista? And can it be resolved?

Edit: Just to be sure, I`ve reinstalled Vista and CoD4 again. Tried to run
the game. It did, for 2 minutes So its probably a Vista-bug?
Please advice!

Thanks,

Remi

Could be a problem with the Catalyst-HD3870-Vista combination but I guess you already looked that up. Just like you already tried 'virtually every trick'.
Did you check what caused the crash? For example, looked in the eventlog, submitted the problem ('Checking for a solution...') to Microsoft? In case there is a short BSOD, freeze it (system properties -> advanced -> startup and recovery -> automatic restart) and check what driver caused it.
Hope you get it right cos a videocard like that should easily run CoD4 without any problems

=?Utf-8?B?UmVtaQ==?= <Remi@xxxxxx> wrote in
news:9712376E-583B-4FC6-AE17-44ADF528DEAC@xxxxxx:
No, it's really not, does your power supply have a brand name? If my
power supply said "500W Heavy-Duty" I would throw that junk in the trash
and go buy a name brand like Antec, or Enermax, etc. Find the brand name
and make sure it's not a "known to blow up computers" type power supply.
Your video card driver is crashing, or your video card is overheating
causing Vista to shut down your video card driver for fear that it'll
cause more damage to your video card. If your system it chrashing as
soon as you hit the 3d graphics, then something on your computer is
failing.

Check your system cooling, get a large fan, point it at your video card
and try the game again.
Try the video card in another "working" computer.
Try integrated video if your motherboard has one (remove the ATi card
entirely).

If anything like the above fixes your problem then your video card is
probably defective.
Doubt it, Don't know why one OS works and another does not. I still
think some of your hardware is failing.

To reiterate, I doubt it is a Vista "Bug". Windows has bugs, it's
Windows. Sounds like you're pretty comfortable playing around with your
hardware, You might see if you can find a good hardware stress test like
PC-Check by EuroSoft, it stresses your system outside of windows. HD,
Vid, Sound, CPU, RAM, etc.

Maybe something else on your system besides video is failing. Can't
really say for certain.

--
-A.