Had to go back to XP

[UnusualSuspect]

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.

[Spooky]

I'm using an ATI X800 series with the in-box drivers, it works fine in fact better then it does in WinXP just using the in-box drivers.

The beta drivers from ATI are wayyyyy from ready and shouldn't be used in RC1. Some people tho are using them sucessfully, but then again every system is different. Besides, doing beta software or drivers that are not native to the beta OS, mixing beta with beta, is never really a good idea.

Did you by chance have all the options enabled to suspend, hibernate, screen saver, etc... ? If so and you had the ATI beta drivers installed then this might be your problem. I've heard of this happening to others and its always been an interaction with the ATI beta drivers and the hibernate, suspend, screen saver stuff. What you can try is to boot into safe mode and remove the ATI beta drivers and install the in-box drivers or just use the default vga driver until you get the rest of the stuff straight, turn off all the hibernate, suspend, screen saver, etc...sometimes however you have to completly re-install. Another thing you can try is a repair install of Vista, i've heard this has fixed the problem for some people.

It seems MS always has problems with the hibernate and suspend stuff in every beta and it usually isn't finally stabalized until the end of the beta.

Then again, the card just may have failed or be failing, ATI cards are known for that - to just seem to work but not all the way when they are getting ready to fail. Its unlikely Vista made it fail.

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.

Edited October 2, 2006 by Spooky

[tarquel]

Just couldn't help it:

It seems MS always has problems with the hibernate and suspend stuff in every beta and it usually isn't finally stabalized until the end of the beta.

...and it usually isn't fixed at all

I never use it on any machine - in any OS... most machines always seem to have issues with standby / suspend [tho hibernate is usually ok].

Just don't have everything running on startup and keep it "clean" is my motto hehe

Cheers

Nath

[The Apache]

i hate windows vista, mostly because of the performance on my computer.

most of it is eye candy - and the new task manager and shutting down processes process is utterly ridiculous. i tell you now, i won't be moving to vista anytime soon.

[RJARRRPCGP]

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.

That looks like a hardware malfunction. Make sure that your heatsink is seated properly and that the fan is working and working properly. That don't sound like a Windows bug. More likely a coincidence. You can get the symptoms that you just had if the processor is overheating.

The same can happen if the GPU cooling is bad. But waking up with it off, but with the power LED blinking or flashing sounds like the anti-processor overheat protection got triggered.

Edited October 5, 2006 by RJARRRPCGP

[Jeremy]

The easiest way to go back to XP from Vista is:

make sure if you have an image of your system when XP was installed. if you don't like Vista, reboot, boot to CD, restore image file, reboot, done. Cheers!

The Power.... of Acronis True Image

[UnusualSuspect]

That looks like a hardware malfunction. Make sure that your heatsink is seated properly and that the fan is working and working properly. That don't sound like a Windows bug. More likely a coincidence. You can get the symptoms that you just had if the processor is overheating.

The same can happen if the GPU cooling is bad. But waking up with it off, but with the power LED blinking or flashing sounds like the anti-processor overheat protection got triggered.

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.