Hello all,
I had tried to use windows vista 64 a few weeks ago and it kept freezing on my quite frequently. It would happen anytime from the first windows logo showing up during startup to an hour in my favorite videogame, and any time between. The computer would just lock up totally, either with complete silence or a high pitch tone. I havent gotten any errors and I have already tried tweaking the voltages on my RAM. I have since dual booted with XP Pro and have had no problems so I don't believe its a hardware issue unless due to incompatibility with Vista. Any suggestions on what would cause the freezing? I believe my computer info is in my sig or in my profile. Any advice provided is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Oddly enough my intermitten freezes just went away with time. If i had to make a guess it's something to do with superfetch making adjustments. How long do your freezes last? Mine would be anywhere from 15secs to 45secs.

You are using the correct drivers everywhere for vista 64?

I would start with the soundcard. Take it out and go with onboard sound for a bit, see if that is the problem. I find Creative is the cause of most of my troubles in life, even though I own a Fatality Extreme Gamer yadayada.

before the freeze's did your computer lose power suddenly while you were running vista. if so you could have a corrupt install the best remedy would be a complete format and reinstall.

im assume nvidia graphics card, have you ever seen an alert that said your drivers have failed?

I haven't had any "drivers have failed" errors. I have tried reformatting and that didnt solve the problems, in fact the computer froze while installing vista, but i still think the OS is the problem because XP works just fine. I might try that sound card idea though. Oh and Psy, the freezes are total and I have to manually power of the computer to restart. I have tried waiting hours and the computer will always stay frozen.

Hey avalanche0316, may i asked how much ram you are using?are you using enough memory maybe?

Well I wasnt able to install vista with my usual 3 gigs, 3x1024mb, so i installed with 2, updated to sp1 then added the thirds stick.

If you hare a using a 64bit os system i recommend that you use over 4 gigs of ram , maybe 6 or 8 gigs on a 64 bit os.especially if it's vista 64 bit os.

Death please, oh no I meant cake, cake please.
Yes I understand there is a run on cake and you did not anticipate the demand, but I really do want cake.
All righty Eddy Izzard not withstanding, on to you problem.
I would monitor the info in admin tools in the control panel, event viewer, memory diagnostics, and reliability and performance.
If you are using an x-fi card there are new drivers out for it.

So is it stable with just the 2gbs?

Uhh... What? Are you a shill for Kingston, or what? I'm running a Sparc 2e, Solaris 10, and 512 MB ram. CPU goes a bit high when I open Mozilla, for about 5 seconds, but then again, I'm opening about 6 tabs.

You wouldn't have a few MB fb dimms you'd like to give me, would you?

LOL, I wasn't going to say anything but ya, unless you are running some serious video editing software or maybe running multiple games at the same time, I see no need for more than 4 Gigs currently. Good idea to keep your options open of course. 4 sticks of 1 gig RAM is a bad choice these days.

So right now the plan is to try and run the machine with 2 gigs of ram and update the sound card drivers. Ill let you guys know how that goes. Thanks for the help

4gb of ram is perfectly acceptable on a vista machine im running without pagefile with 4gb, 2gb should be good enough for general usage without two much lag, 1gb is usable if you dont game or multi task. if your using more then 4gb your probably looking at VMware computer.

back too topic

could it be a faulty ram stick?
you said you installed with 2gb then added a third leave it out and stress test, then add it again and stress test see what happens.

I dont think faulty memory is the problem. I have run memtest many times overnight without any errors.

So to recap, you are getting "hard locks" (a better word than freezes, means you have to manually reboot from the switch) and memtest says your RAM is fine?

It really does sound like a sound card problem. Did you try the onboard sound yet?

How would I go about testing to see if its the sound card? Do I need to physically remove the card? Can I just uninstall the drivers?

It's possible to disable the card in device manager and remove the drivers, however I would recommend removing the drivers first, powering down, and pulling the card out. This will ensure there is no possibility of any physical problem with the card or slot coming into play. You could then enable on board sound in BIOS and plug your speakers into that, or just not use any sound for a bit.

I've reviewed everything in this thread and I think maybe you are still missing some things.

You list your MB as an nForce2 680i, but there is no brand name?

You need to go to your vendors site and make sure you have the latest chipset drivers from them. You also need to look to see what Vista specific drivers are there. You may need to update your BIOS by flashing it. Check the version number of your BIOS and compare it to what they list.

Do not ever assume that automatic update in Vista or XP gives you all the driver updates you need.

There now I have covered some of the bases.

You said: "Lock up completely either with silence or a high pitched tone" I took that to mean the tone came from your speakers and so I think the sound card is the place to start.

If the high pitched tone came out of your PC case, we have a different problem

I have the Same EXACT problem.. I have OC'd my machine to 3.65, an E6850, on an Asus Striker Extreme (680i) with the 1504 Bios.. 4 Gig of Ram (2x2 Crucial) runnin 1066 @ 5-5-5-15.. I also have a Sound blaster Fatil1ty pci..

It will be random, but I also will get a solid Freeze, with a high pitched squeal coming thru my headphones..

I also have 2x 8800 Ultras, runnin g insingle or SLI mode same thing, tho sli ususlly locks up more.

Also of note, i ran Memtest for 16 hours, Not One error.