Tripredacus

You need to post what appears on this bsod.

Did you try any of the 5 resolutions in that link?

Perhaps take your vLited Vista, install on machine. install Office. sysprep/generalize, capture with imagex. This is the standard recommendations I get from MS.

You may wish to look in the BIOS to see if you can manually delegate resources there. If the use automatic settings box is unavailable, it is usually because the BIOS is set to control resources, usually via the "Plug and Play OS" option or perhaps other options.

I see it that Microsoft basically "solved" this issue by making the WGA. Anyone foolish enough to use Windows updates and puts on the WGA get's their system f'ed up.

My computer does that also, but it is because there is a problem with the drive. It thinks all media is blank (hence games, apps and movies won't play) but it can burn properly which is kinda confusing cuz after it ejects when finished, it can't read what it just wrote...

I recommend installing OfficeReady. It is the full Office 2007 install, but when you open it asks for your key and it unlocks the Office features that go along with that key. My current Business SP1 image uses OfficeReady and I plan to do our other images that way as well.

This sounds like it is one of those classic warning signs we all ignore, then in a few weeks/months/years when the PC finally dies we say we didn't see it coming!

I have never seen the tab for disabling autoplay before. It always annoyed me that it wasn't in XP (or maybe idk where it is?) and I used it in 98, and using SHIFT to bypass autoplay (which still works in XP) also triggers the StickyKeys program.

Typically, the video is not available message is caused by one of two things: 1. Youtube is doing website maintenance. You can check this by going to Youtube.com and it will have a colored bar at the top of the screen below the search if there is any maintenance being performed. 2. The video was removed by Youtube. This usually happens concerning IP content that isn't legally allowed on Youtube in the first place, like movies, advance movie trailers, exclusive content, music videos, episode parts. Youtube doesn't hunt for these types of videos, but removes them usually because the IP owners (movie, record and other companies) find them and request them to be removed. Different companies appear to audit Youtube on certain schedules, and if you frequent the site enough, you will be able to see the video deletion pattern for specific types of videos.

I've had similar problems after sorting large amounts of data. I think it has to do with caching data into memory like file names and the meta data that Windows can display in the tooltip if you hover a file. In every time a reboot made the problems go away. I've only had the strange black squares (and eventual context menu display corruption) occurr after moving large amounts of files around, but it could also be caused by another program. What is happening is that explorer is supposed to display a transparency (like an alpha channel) but it does not have enough resources to display it, so it elects not to and you actually "see" the alpha channel/transparency layer of the GUI instead of it being clear. Its kind of a lacking in image technology since all images still rely on coordinates and having to be 4 sided squares or rectangles, as there are no true dynamic images.

Wouldn't it be easier to manage your power settings for the machine through group policy? I may end up taking a look into that. I am shifting roles from being the server guy to being the Vista guy and I was just given the MS RK book. Anything to make it easier I suppose. If they are set through GP will that stop the settings from being reset during the upgrade? It isn't a big issue for me because I will be doing only one or two more image updates, but I wanted to post that it does happen.

What CDs have you tried booting from? Can you boot from your Windows CD? Typically, the inability to boot is a hardware problem.

Also, @ThreadOP, you don't NEED to buy Windows 7 the instant it comes out!

I suppose on the Vista machines you have already had them stop being in a workgroup right?

Are you using certified hardware? We only run 2008 on certified hardware because we also tried running it on "our old system" and it didn't work properly.

It is possible that your drive is indeed failing. It is also possible to make Chkdsk destroy a HDD by constantly running it! Back when I worked for a college, my co-worker made up a lab environ where he ran CHKDSK over and over for about 10 hours on a machine, and the total good sectors started at 100% and he got it down to 36% by the time he left to go home. So if your disk is going bad (physically bad and not file-system bad) chkdsk has the capability of destroying it on you. If you feel that it is indeed failing you should mirror it (image) to a replacement drive.

If the COA (cd-key) has already been activated once, you need to call the Microsoft number that is on your activation screen because the online activation server can't reactivate a COA.

This is more of a report than a question, but you can discuss it if you like. I've spent the last few (business) days making a new image for Vista Business and integrating SP1 and testing. Our base image was Vista Business RTM volume license and power settings of disable hibernate, disable sleep, and do not require a password on resume. If you don't disable the password on resume, if your account doesn't have a password and the computer goes to sleep, when you wake it, it disables your account and the only thing you can do is reboot (with the reset switch). So I loaded on SP1, and after it was all done I let it sit overnight. I come in the next day (Friday) and found the account was locked out after "turned it on" which actually it was hibernating and I did not realise it because the power light was off. I went in and checked the Power Options and indeed all the settings I had in my RTM image had been reset to defaults, which meant I had to set them all again. So if you are experiencing this issue as well, you aren't alone.

Or have never looked into what caused said problems, and just blamed it on Vista. Or try to run it on substandard/minimum specs. Do you remember how Windows 2000 ran on minimum specs?

btw running the setup.exe won't give you a demo32 error!

In the power section of the BIOS, you may see a "Resume" option. If it is enabled, it allows you to choose from a series of numbers. One of our customers uses this because the PC doesn't always turn on after a power failure, so they used it to make sure it turned on. I don't know how it works or what the numbers mean, but I know you can just try disabling that. The name is different in various BIOSes but its usually under the ACPI type (S1 or S3).

I'd like to make a note regarding all the talk about the progress bar. I recently updated my PE image using the new servicing tools provided in the new OPK version. I am sure it made other changes, but one stood out. When you are upping or dropping an image now, instead of it updating the % and time remaining on a single line, it now draws a new line with the new % in 1% increments! This might make it easier to make the progress bar work? IDK but it sounds like a start. If you were to use, say autoit, we know it can read stuff of the screen (like how people use it to make bots for games), but is this possible: 1. Press enter to start imaging drive C 2. gImageX does not suppress the cmd prompt it is running the command from, but puts it behind the HTA (window) layer. 3. The script read line info from the cmd prompt behind GImageX. 4. The progressbar determines how to display based on info received from script. Obviously I am partly mixing up its screen reading functionality with its other features... I think, while I am on the subject, I will contact our rep to see if the PE puts that progress info into a memory location that can be read.

iirc WGA is not a distributable update, since it has an end-user agreement you must accept. It is targetted at users who already have their computer, and not for system builders to integrate. We got into a discussion with our rep when he found out we were installing Windows Updates on some computers via the website, instead of using the media they send us. Since we are not given WGA at all, we were told we are not supposed to put it on there because the end-user has to be the one to accept the agreement.

On our Vista machines, that is how we are able to disable the Receive Window Auto-Tuning feature.