Mr Snrub

This doesn't sound like the classic dual core problem, I would expect it to occur immediately, not after a period of playing the game...How much RAM do you have? Is Windows configured to give priority to applications or background services? Not sure it's possible to set the properties of a shortcut so it sets the affinity automatically on launching - does this mean that you tried setting the affinity to 1 CPU and the problem is now gone?I'll be honest, I wouldn't recommend a Server platform for playing games anyway, the kernel model is the same as XP so stability should not be an issue and I would expect performance to be more likely to be worse than the Workstation OS for foreground applications. Then there are the potential issues of apps/games refusing to install on Windows Server - and the fact that if you have paid for a Server OS and don't use it as such then this is a huge waste of money.

More information required to offer any help... What version of Windows? Do you know what the STOP error code is? Is there a "Save Dump" event in the System event log when the server is restarted? (If so, copy & paste the text in it).

Det är lugnt, kolla min dålig svenska Har ni provat den "AMD Athlon™ 64 Processor Driver for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 Version" ännu? Det finns en ny fil från mai 2006... Också, som Aluminium sa, kolla om spelet funkar när ni har "processor affinity" i Task Manager på en processor - händer problemet då? (I Task Manager höger-klicka process (inte application) namnet och man kan se "Affinity".) Händer med alla spel? Har ni några exemplar? -- end of poor Swedish, English version of the above -- Have you tested the "AMD Athlon™ 64 Processor Driver for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 Version" yet? There is a new file from May 2006... Also, as Aluminium said, check if the game works when you have "processor affinity" in Task Manager on one processor - does the problem happen then? (In Task Manager, right-click the process (not application) name and you can see "Affinity".) Does the problem happen with all games? Do you have any examples?

What's the version of %systemroot%\system32\drivers\tcpip.sys on the DC? (Just to rule out an MS05-019 v1 / KB898060 issue.) Did you take a network trace while trying a /resync?

That's definitely beta 2, and not a daily build of Vista? There was an issue with the daily builds around Christmas and into the new year where it would not install on any partition and gave that message - other than that, if I can get the list of partitions up then Vista will at least attempt to install in my experience. Tried deleting and recreating the logical partition from within the WinPE part of the Vista install? I've installed on laptops, desktops and virtual machines, using PATA, SATA (even RAID now) and SCSI, and never had that problem - the only unknown to me is GRUB. Vista would blitz the boot loader anyway to implement BCD.

Yes, 2019 is an event code to indicate a failed attempt to allocate memory from the nonpaged pool, 2020 is a failure to allocate memory from the paged pool.Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Event Viewer - select the System log on the left and the events are listed on the right. Hint: If you click on the column heading "Event" you can sort it by event ID instead of date, that makes it easier to look for 2019 or 2020 [No /3GB or /PAE switches present.] The keys cluberti mentioned can be added to instruct the system to try to allocate as much as it can (up to a hard limit) for paged pool and system PTEs, and to be much more aggressive with trimming the pool (threshold set to 20% instead of the default 80%).If you are getting 2020 events it could be worth adding those values, they don't exist by default. Note, the problem you are getting is not due to the page file size - if Windows runs out of virtual memory entirely then you get popup alerts from the OS itself as that is really bad news. Unfortunately "not enough storage" messages can translate to insufficient memory of several types, ephemeral TCP ports or it could be a bogus error because nothing else fits. Does the error occur as soon as you launch the app, or after a couple of minutes, or specifically when you attempt to attach to the database? Do the authors of the application have anything to say? They would be the best people to ask if Windows isn't reporting any resource shortages, and no other apps are affected...

Hmmm, interesting - do you actually have it in use, or just enabled & not connected?If you use it, do you use the nVidia NIC at the same time? Is IPv6 operational on the NIC? Did you use the bundled Yukon drivers, or downloaded separate ones? My client is multi-homed, when I boot into XP x64 I have the Yukon directly connected to the Internet - GigE connection, but uplinked router is LAN interface is 100Mbps and the WAN side is 24Mbps - jumbo frames are disabled on this NIC. The nVidia is a GigE private LAN with jumbo frames enabled.

Nailed it. It was the Marvell Yukon 88E8001/8003/8010 PCI Gigabit Ethernet Controller - when this device is enabled, the OS hangs after stuttering for a short while - when it's disabled it works like a charm. To continue through the hung installation I selected Safe Mode on restarting. As the OS installation reboots a further 2 times, I had to continue selecting Safe Mode until I got to log on as Administrator and get into Device Manager - from there I could disable the device and boot normally. The A8N-SLI Premium mobo has 2 onboard NICs, when I booted in Safe Mode with Networking it hung as before (leading me to the conclusion it was one of the NICs) - with the nVidia NIC enabled it works just fine - the second I re-enable the Yukon NIC, Windows freezes. Time to log a bug.

Is there anyone that has successfully installed Windows Vista Beta 2 on an Asus A8N-SLI Premium system using a regular SATA drive connected to the nVidia (not SI) SATA controller? I am trying to install the x64 version and it picks up the drive no problem, copies and unpacks all of the files, goes through the installation of features & updates, then reboots to do the "completing installation" step. At this point the machine locks up solidly - frozen screen, no mouse, no keyboard, no disk activity. I think the problem may be related to the USB controller, as I tried going through the system recovery option while I happened to have a flash drive connected, and while the system was locked up there was constant slow flashing on the USB drive light. Tried the x86 version also - same problem. Currently trying to install to a second partition on my RAID set on the same system, see if it does the same... Edit: Updated above text after further testing, I guess it could be the SATA disk...

Might be old news to some of you, but there is a useful document over at MS which describes the Vista deployment overview step-by-step: Windows Vista Beta 2 Deployment Step by Step Guide Step 4 is a nice guide to building a WinPE 2.0 CD then using ImageX (formerly known as XImage) to deploy it from a network share built in the previous steps. Custom WinPE discs and automated deployments of Vista is something I've not yet played with, but intend to start looking at now.

If there are no events before the reboot and it's not generating a dump, I would check for either environmental issues (cleaners unplugging devices to plug in their vacuum cleaners, its not an urban myth) or if you BIOS supports Automatic System Recovery (ASR) then disable this. ASRs can cause memory dumps to get corrupted, or spontaneous reboots when the BIOS decides the machine is "unresponsive" and hard resets it. Is the reboot always at the same time of day?

Can't vote as I don't use any 3rd party tools to modify the install files so there's no option in the middle section appropriate. However, for the other 2 questions I reinstall my main rig approximately every 1-2 years - testing machines get rebuilt pretty much every other week (i.e. Vista builds at work). On a running system I just apply the hotfixes delivered by Windows Update as there is no benefit in updating an install image and reinstalling a system, then having the hassle of reinstalling all the apps and setting preferences back up. I do , however, maintain my silent install DVD image with SATA/RAID drivers, slipstreamed hotfixes and silently-installed apps to minimize the effort if a rebuild is required - this is just common sense as I'm running RAID0 for my OS & app partitions. Currently running XP x64 Edition, next reinstall will be when Vista is released and I'll put the 64-bit version on after checking my apps & games work flawlessly.

Because you can bet that someone would complain that they just want Windows 2003 SP1 without the R2 extras but they were "forced" to.And then we'd be faced with having both integrated and non-integrated flavours to choose from. People already complain about the multitude of versions of XP and Vista...

A quick note about LastLogon - I assume this is still the case, but I know for a fact that in a Windows 2000 AD a couple of years ago you had to query every DC for its version of the LastLogon field as it's not replicated and is per-authenticating-DC. So if you only query DC1 and it says a user hasn't logged on since January you may be missing that they have been authenticating every day since then against DC2 and mistakenly assume them to be idle accounts. We noticed this as the company I worked for used NDS which has a single replicated field for every user's last logon date so it didn't matter which server you ran the LDAP query against - but we wanted to achieve the same result in AD and found this little quirk.

Should the thread title read: Will you upgrade to Windows Vista? or Will you upgrade your hardware for Windows Vista? By the time Vista is released I should have had chance to test all the apps & games I use currently on XP x64 to check they work - if there are any that do not work then I will consider dual-booting my machine for a while until there are fixes or replacement products. My hardware won't need an upgrade, I built my current system a few months ago with pretty much high-spec kit and it still has room for expansion (dual core CPU, SATA2 disks, SLI'd graphics, for example). I run my work laptop on Vista so it's getting a good road test for usability, and I am seeing it shape up nicely between builds. I keep my file system in order so WinFS won't be that much of a benefit to me, I prefer to know where my files without needing to do extensive searching for them, Aero is very nice even on my non-LDDM graphics chipset. IE7 & Live Messenger are now fitting in very well with the Vista interface (it will be very interesting to see Office 2007 in combination with Vista). One of the best features is LUA, and I am very pleased with the fact that it is impossible to install unsigned kernel-mode code in the 64-bit version. The UI improvements with Explorer are also nice - number & size of files plus current transfer speed when copying files, and the ability to click a separator between folder names in a long path to branch off to a different part of the folder structure in 1 click is great. WinPE-based installation is a great improvement too, and the C-TCP implementation works very well. Even the free games got an overhaul with sound, scaling graphics and improved quality.

Half Life 2 works fine for me - did you install it via Steam? (It even patched itself a few weeks ago to become a native 64-bit process.) Never played Act of War - could it be DEP or CD copy-protection causing the problem? I would recommend checking out the support FAQs for the game, see if XP x64 is even a supported platform. The only game I've had problems with was Sacred, and that was the copy protection system they used. Checking out the forums/FAQs for each game is your best bet of finding it it works on XP x64.

Is SP1 installed? Are you using DNS for WINS resolution? Do you have reverse lookup zones configured? Does the DNS process consume 100% CPU time when the problem is encountered? Is DNS standard primary or AD-integrated?

The NLBS component is so very simple it doesn't have much to "go wrong" - when networking devices try to be too smart they cause problems, though.In essence, switches that try to route at the IP level instead of the MAC level can associate an IP address (a virtual one in this case) with a specific port that they "know" the device is on. Cisco, in particular, do not agree with Microsoft on the implementation of virtual IP load balancing and so their devices often cause problems. I have a bit of an advantage Your easiest way to prove it's a networking infrastructure problem and not with NLBS or IIS itself is to plug both servers into a hub or a simple switch which is then uplinked to the Cisco. I've had this problem myself with a Cisco Catalyst 6500.

What is the affinity set to? Is the dedicated IP address the primary one in each node, and the common virtual address added as a secondary? (This is how you should have it.) NLBS is not application-aware, so stopping the IIS service will make no difference to the cluster membership and you should get client connections still being directed to each node as they are both working correctly. Disabling the NIC should cause a recovergence of the cluster and the one node left should handle 100% of the load. It is vital that you use a layer 2 switch, or a layer 2 VLAN if it is a layer 3 switch. What does the command "wlbs query" report when you run it on either node when you are doing your tests? Almost every NLB issue I have dealt with has been a switch/network problem.

You appear to be missing the main point: The primary purpose is for users, or more likely companies, to be aware that they are using a non-genuine copy of Windows unknowingly - something they bought in good faith from a software vendor. Those people can then contact Microsoft and the distributors of illegal software, not the end users, are the ones who can be identified and prosecuted. At the end of the day we know any copy protection system can (and will) be cracked, you can only make it as difficult as possible. WGA is about letting people know they are using pirated software who were previously unaware of the fact - it is not a copy protection system per se. The information sent from your machine to Microsoft for product activation is simply a hash of key system components, nothing else - no personal information and nothing that can be gleaned from reversing the hashed data. If there was any personal data being sent without your knowledge then you can bet someone would have found (and jumped all over it) by now - look at how quickly Zone Labs got slammed when it transpired opting out of automatic update checks did not stop Zone Alarm communicating with the manufacturer, due to a bug.

To set the primary DNS to a static value:netsh interface ip set dns "Local Area Connection" static 192.168.1.53 To revert it to use DHCP: netsh interface ip set dns "Local Area Connection" dhcp Enter "netsh interface ip set dns" to see the usage options.

Most often I see delays at that point due to either: - wireless NICs enabled and trying to search for WLANs - persistent drive mappings attempting to restore when not available Wired interfaces don't usually cause the delay if not connected as the interface state is reported as down, so the system is aware - wireless adapters don't have this of course, so if enabled the system will attempt to use them. Disable any wireless NIC to see if you get an immediate speed increase.

I would advise not activating Windows until you have had a stable system that you don't "want to format" for, say, a week.That'll save you a few phone calls.

For simplicity, security and resilience just use the defaults (system drive, NTFS format) and make regular backups of your documents. There are those who argue that having the OS, applications and data on separate partitions is actually worse for performance because the hard drive head has to move further between random reads for uncached data. (Writes are handled by the Cache Manager in Windows so shouldn't suffer quite so much, depending on the how the application flushes.) If there is an application or hotfix which expects your profile to be on the system partition (for whatever reason) it could be very difficult to understand why it crashes or fails to install. Also, between OS installs your user SIDs will not be consistent so holding My Documents on a separate partition means you need to take ownership (unless you are in a domain). Any advice to install Windows on a FATxx system is bad advice IMO - probably from the same people recommending disabling Windows Firewall or not installing SP2 or AV. I doubt you could observe any significant real world (not synthetic benchmark) performance difference between FAT and NTFS. NTFS security has to do with restricting access to files and data on a per-user basis, and nothing to do with detecting viruses or malware (this is the realm of 3rd party software and/or limiting user access by not being logged in as an administrator). Win9x has only FAT and neither has a concept of different users - so dad's accounts files are visible to his kids, along with his "not for kids" pictures - a user is a user is a user.

MSINFO32 is present on XP, XP x64 and 2003 and can be called directly from Start / Run.It does not, by default, work from a command prompt as it resides in "%programfiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSInfo". The MPS reporting tools used at Microsoft call MSInfo32.exe when gathering system information on any version of Windows. If the machines are in a domain then doesn't the computer object store the OS version reported when the computer last booted up?