Marshall--
1) If those sound card drivers work, I would be skeptical they are slowing
down anything. MSFT is going to make a big marketing deal out of the rating
system-- the so-called system assessment tool which is possibly as nebulous
as it is meaningless. At some MSFT conferences long time employees who know
Vista well are not supporting this tool as very meaningful.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scr...ta/winsat.mspx
2) If you haven't added a driver recently and have been running for a while
with the drivers you have, I wouldn't be inclined to blame those for these
blue screens. It sounds like your driver setup is fine.
3) I meant to ask you to go to type eventvwr.msc in the run box and click on
system and use the down arrow and see if any error stands out at the time of
your blue screens. Then do the same for application.
4) If startup repair didn't work, I strongly urge you to try Complete PC
Restore, and finally system restore. System restore in Vista works on a
similar premise to SR in XP, but it has been made more powerful and is
constructed borrowing from the server systems using Volume Shadow services.
It also could be run from Win RE outside Windows if you couldn't boot.
System restore will go to an eariler time and the idea is to go to a time
before the trouble happened. You don't lose anything except potentially
hotfixes or security updates since the time of the restore point and there
aren't many of those in Vista so they would be easily updated and possibly
shortcuts you made since the restore point. I see no downside whatsoever to
using it, but try Complete PC Restore first. When you do try system
restore, try every restore point you have, prior to your problem. using the
more desirable one timewise first. You can undo a restore if you don't
like it, but I can't imagine any downside for you and it only takes a few
minutes--it's not a lot of complicated work--just a couple clicks.
SR may not always work, but it is sure worth trying in this situation.
Restore points can be corrupted in XP by involuntary shutdowns. In Vista I'm
nor sure if that happens with Volume shadow service based restore points,
but if you have a dual boot, and go to XP, you will lose Vista restore
points.
5) As to Driver Verifier, we want deadlock detection off in this situation
***and the only drivers I want you to uncheck using step #4 in the series I
gave you and on is any driver that is listed with Avast Antivirus.*** We
are just stopping their inspection not their activity.
This has it's basis in several MSKBs and discussions I have seen on Verifier
and antivirus driver detection causing this type of behavior with random
blue screens.
Let me know if Event Viewer yields any information as to errors. Give both
Complete PC Restore and all system restore points if Complete PC restore
doesn't work a shot.
CH
"Marshall" <Marshall@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:3D6A212F-6C1B-4269-B4FF-A8B08B8120B9@microsoft.com...
> Chad,
>
> Firstly, thankyou for the detailed and helpful replies so far, it is most
> appreciated!
>
> I'll try to break down what I have done so that I can help you understand
> what I am getting at - all apologies if I wasn't too clear in past posts!
>
> Hardware drivers are standard vista defaults, apart from my soundcard
> which
> is a C-Media onboard sound card (on the motherboard), and my video card
> (ATI
> Radeon X600, using the drivers that ATI provided for Vista Beta 2). When I
> reviewed my system performance it stated that 'drivers may be slowing your
> pc
> down when starting' and these drivers were identified by windows as being
> my
> C-Media sound card drivers. I have searched around and cannot find a newer
> version of the sound card drivers.
>
> As for the wwindows repair environment, I followed your advice and tried
> only the option that said 'startup repair'. It failed to find anything
> that
> it could fix. I cannot see this 'Fabricant' that you mention either?
>
> Now as for the system restore, my understanding is that similar to XP, it
> will restore my PC to an earlier point in time, is this correct? And as
> for
> me saying I don't want to use it, I think thats just me being frustrated
> and
> lazy - You're right, I need to try it again if it fixes the problem! I
> tried
> it earlier when I had a problem with a program that I installed and it did
> help, but alas it did not fix my blue screen problem.
>
> Sorry I didn't clarify, I CAN boot to windows, and I am using it, but
> randomly I get a blue screen when using other applications and my PC then
> restarts.
>
> Now, with this deadlock detection, when I run verifier and tell it to
> display current settings, every option is set to 'no' (as in not enabled),
> so
> when I am checking, deadlock detection is not on...
>
> Now when you say to tell it what drivers that I want it to verify, what
> would you suggest that I tell it to do? At the minute when I have hit
> display
> settings EVERY option is turned off (they all say 'no')... (once again
> apologies as I think I'm missing the point here?)
>
> Thankyou for your time!
> -Marshall