A
Al Smith
Flightless Bird
Dave-UK wrote:
>
> "Al Smith" <invalid@address.com> wrote in message
> news:zxH9n.61929$Db2.57409@edtnps83...
>> Ken Blake, MVP wrote:
>>> On Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:47:56 GMT, Al Smith<invalid@address.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm finding Windows 7 to be less stable than my last Os, Windows
>>>> XP. Vista went off my wife's computer so fast, I didn't really get
>>>> a chance to use it. Once I saw that I couldn't do file operations
>>>> with Vista, that was it, I replaced it with XP and never looked
>>>> back. At least I can copy and move files with Windows 7, which is
>>>> an improvement, I guess. But it locks up or crashes more often
>>>> than XP did.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> That may be your experience, but it's very far from everyone's
>>> experience. I've been running the released version here since it first
>>> came out, and the RC for several months before that. Neither one has
>>> *ever* crashed or locked up on me. And I know many others with similar
>>> experiences.
>>>
>>> I had no problems with Vista either.
>>>
>>> Since your experience is different, you should be looking hard for
>>> problems on your machine. Perhaps malware infection?
>>>
>>>
>>
>> LOL, some say that Microsoft software is itself malware. I run a clean
>> computer. I don't have malware. Even so, I get lockups of programs
>> that require a hard reboot (because the monitor screen fails to
>> respond at all), spontaneous reboots, and blue screens. Doesn't happen
>> often, but it happens. I put this down to *probably* the older
>> programs that I am running. It is, of course, possible that I have a
>> flaw in one of my RAM chips. But I'm not going to blame my hardware
>> just yet, for what I believe is software instability. The problem I
>> had with dragging windows is gone, thanks to an update in the nVidia
>> driver.
>>
>> -Al-
>
> If you haven't already done so, here are a couple of things you might
> look at to find out why your machine is so unstable. Have a look in the
> Event Viewer:
> Control Panel
> System and Security
> Administrative tools
> Event Viewer
> Under Custom Views > Administrative events is a summary of errors
> from the individual logs files listed in the left pane.
>
> and the reliability history,
>
> Reliability History Graph:
> Control Panel
> System and Security
> Action Center
> Maintenance > drop down menu > View Reliability history.
> Select to view by Days and click on an item to view details.
>
Thanks for the tips. I keep working on my system, making it more
lean and hopefully more stable. Last night I finally tracked down
a problem that I mentioned here, that has been driving me nuts ...
constant, regular accessing of my external USB drive. I'd tried
everything I could think of. Last night I ran Process Monitor and
set it to show only programs. I turned them off, one after
another. Finally, the very *last* thing I tried seemed to do the
trick -- I turned off active scan in Windows Defender. The
external drive doesn't chug any longer.
It was worth the effort, because I was able to shut down some
worthless things that were running for nothing. Did you know that
nVidia has 3D turned on by default? It runs in the background all
the time as a service, and in the past at least has given
considerable problems to users through excessive CPU use. I was
able to shut that down, along with several other things -- several
search functions that were still running, for example.
I think the main reason I've had instability problems has been the
older games I play, coupled with the original nVidia driver, which
had some sort of bug in it that applied specifically to my Dell
computer. I'm experimenting with running the games in various
compatibility modes to find which works the best.
-Al-
>
> "Al Smith" <invalid@address.com> wrote in message
> news:zxH9n.61929$Db2.57409@edtnps83...
>> Ken Blake, MVP wrote:
>>> On Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:47:56 GMT, Al Smith<invalid@address.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm finding Windows 7 to be less stable than my last Os, Windows
>>>> XP. Vista went off my wife's computer so fast, I didn't really get
>>>> a chance to use it. Once I saw that I couldn't do file operations
>>>> with Vista, that was it, I replaced it with XP and never looked
>>>> back. At least I can copy and move files with Windows 7, which is
>>>> an improvement, I guess. But it locks up or crashes more often
>>>> than XP did.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> That may be your experience, but it's very far from everyone's
>>> experience. I've been running the released version here since it first
>>> came out, and the RC for several months before that. Neither one has
>>> *ever* crashed or locked up on me. And I know many others with similar
>>> experiences.
>>>
>>> I had no problems with Vista either.
>>>
>>> Since your experience is different, you should be looking hard for
>>> problems on your machine. Perhaps malware infection?
>>>
>>>
>>
>> LOL, some say that Microsoft software is itself malware. I run a clean
>> computer. I don't have malware. Even so, I get lockups of programs
>> that require a hard reboot (because the monitor screen fails to
>> respond at all), spontaneous reboots, and blue screens. Doesn't happen
>> often, but it happens. I put this down to *probably* the older
>> programs that I am running. It is, of course, possible that I have a
>> flaw in one of my RAM chips. But I'm not going to blame my hardware
>> just yet, for what I believe is software instability. The problem I
>> had with dragging windows is gone, thanks to an update in the nVidia
>> driver.
>>
>> -Al-
>
> If you haven't already done so, here are a couple of things you might
> look at to find out why your machine is so unstable. Have a look in the
> Event Viewer:
> Control Panel
> System and Security
> Administrative tools
> Event Viewer
> Under Custom Views > Administrative events is a summary of errors
> from the individual logs files listed in the left pane.
>
> and the reliability history,
>
> Reliability History Graph:
> Control Panel
> System and Security
> Action Center
> Maintenance > drop down menu > View Reliability history.
> Select to view by Days and click on an item to view details.
>
Thanks for the tips. I keep working on my system, making it more
lean and hopefully more stable. Last night I finally tracked down
a problem that I mentioned here, that has been driving me nuts ...
constant, regular accessing of my external USB drive. I'd tried
everything I could think of. Last night I ran Process Monitor and
set it to show only programs. I turned them off, one after
another. Finally, the very *last* thing I tried seemed to do the
trick -- I turned off active scan in Windows Defender. The
external drive doesn't chug any longer.
It was worth the effort, because I was able to shut down some
worthless things that were running for nothing. Did you know that
nVidia has 3D turned on by default? It runs in the background all
the time as a service, and in the past at least has given
considerable problems to users through excessive CPU use. I was
able to shut that down, along with several other things -- several
search functions that were still running, for example.
I think the main reason I've had instability problems has been the
older games I play, coupled with the original nVidia driver, which
had some sort of bug in it that applied specifically to my Dell
computer. I'm experimenting with running the games in various
compatibility modes to find which works the best.
-Al-