UnusualSuspect

Well, I'm back to XP now and everything is fine. I've had the computer running non-stop for the past 3 days (slow downloads.. grr..), been playing graphic intensive games, etc, and nothing has gone wrong. It definitely seems like a Windows Vista bug to me - or one of the drivers installed with it. I started up the computer (when Vista was still on there) and I had a picture, but once it got about half way through the start up process (the bit with the black screen, and the small bar with the lines running across it), the screen just died. No signal reported on my monitor. It was fine when I went to bed, but in the morning that had happened. The cooling on both my processor and graphics card is fine - the processor has a heatsink that the Empire State Building would be jealous about, size-wise, I never go much above 40c on the processor - and the graphics card has one of those blower fans that speeds up the higher the temperature goes. I put it on full once and it sounded like a hairdryer.. lol.. kept the card cool though. So I don't know what happened, really. Maybe it is to do with what the others have said, about standby and the screensaver, because I know I didn't turn those off. Not sure why it would go into standby though, as I was downloading stuff all night, so the computer would have been busy. The only thing I can think of is maybe the ATI beta drivers don't alter the fan speed as of now, and as Vista is graphics intensive the heat slowly built up and eventually caused a shut down. If the drivers don't alter the fan speed, then ATI need to be shot, because thats extremely important.

Well, Vista seemed to be running fine so I left it on overnight to download a few things. Woke up in the morning and my system is off and my power light is flashing at me - never a good sign. When I restart the computer, it takes a few attempts to just get a screen, then finally I get the booting up image. It gets so far in the bootup process and my graphics card just dies, my monitor gives the message "No Signal.". I can get into safe mode, but even removing the graphics drivers doesn't help, so I eventually go back to WinXP. I'm still in a state of panic, wondering if it hasn't damaged my graphics card. The normal desktop stuff works fine, but I haven't been able to set WinXP up to a state where I can try 3D applications yet, and as Vista is all 3D... ruh row.. No more Vista for me! I'll stay with WinXP until Vista is stable and released. Lovely operating system it is though. For reference: I was using Vista RC1 with a Radeon X1800 and the ATI beta drivers.