"vista may be annoying you but put it politely"

Fine. I'll put it politely. Heck, I'll even use correct punctuation and capitalization. Windows Vista is a SILLY OS and I've had enough. Why in JESUS' name would Dell not give you the option of having an OS that works, as opposed to an OS that has so many bugs in it, you can't even write a SILLY term paper without OS problems popping up?! First it told me it didn't recognize the system's OS so I was on the phone with a LESS THAN INTELLIGENT person from SOME OTHER COUNTRY for 2 hours. That was 2 weeks ago. Now, this morning when I woke up, I saw the BSOD only with a fun new twist. Something about a Windows crash. But I didn't have time to read it all or look at it. That "polite" enough for you????

 

Congratulations.

 

Intelligent people will be challenged to understand you when you are having a rant. Cool it!

What's wrong with a BSOD? They are a standard Windows feature. If Vista owners didn't get them from time to time they they might complain that they are missing something. It's a reminder that your computer may crash at any time so keep everything saved and backed up.

John

 

I guess I have been lucky I have never had the privilege of getting a BSOD on my VISTA system .

 

Perhaps that I haven't seen one for ages on XP.

 

Why didn't I EVER had a problem with vista in 14 months (both betas)? I feel strange

 

You had time for a rant but not to read an error message?!


If your system is running check the Event Viewer/System and see if there's anything which helps. Double click on an entry to see it in more detail. There could be several entries which led up to your BSoD so check any entries with warning icons next to them.

To get to the event viewer right click on "my computer" or vista equivalent choose "manage" then under system tools you'll see "Event Viewer", or, I think if you type Event Viewer in the search box on the start menu you should see it listed there.

 

Receiving the BSOD is a good thing. If you have a hardware problem or something causing a problem for the machine then it is better for the PC to enter a safe/stable state than to continue running as such. The OS controls how your software communicates with the hardware. If those protections aren't in place by the OS it would be possible for your software programs to destroy your hardware or at least all of your data.

Vista does not cause BSOD's for no reason, nor do any other Windows Operating Systems. I have never once seen it running Vista on my laptop for a while now, and with a little bit of effort have been able to get everything I needed to work correctly.

Without seeing the error message that displayed with the BSOD there is little help we can give you. If you purchased the PC from Dell it is likely that all of your hardware is supported for Vista and has the neccessary drivers intalled, but there is always the possibility of a driver issue or even a faulty piece of hardware. The last time I had the BSOD was on my XP machine when a RAM stick started to go and before that was a Windows 98 machine due at least 7 or 8 years ago due to a bad video card driver.

Also, it is not our fault nor is it your foreign technicians fault that your PC is acting as such. We would all like to try and help you, but would appreciate being treated with respect.

As for writing a term paper, I have managed to create several large business documents, compile a number of various programs, and run all different types of software on 64 bit Vista without any on-going issues.

 

Yes, I have time for a rant now, I'm at work. This is on my brand new home computer.

 

Just a tip for future BSoD should you get them...

If you have a camera phone, take a photo of the screen, that way you have a permanent record of the problem and error number rather than having to scribble all the information down in writing.

 

John, I normally agree with your posts, but I have to take exception with this one. BSODs as a feature of Vista .... The M$ Marketing Department must be kicking themselves for not thinking that one up.

David

 

I will take a look at it when I get home. I was running late, opened my laptop and saw the screen and the words WINDOWS CRASH on it. It's not the first time I've had an OS problem with Vista and the technician said it was certainly an OS error, so I'm extremely frustrated, especially since this is a brand new computer which I had to pull double overtime in order to pay for. My apologies. I don't necessarily want to go back to XP but I wonder if it would be best until they get the bugs worked out of Vista.

 

I completely understand your frustration. It must feel awful to spend thousands of dollars to get something that isn't what you wanted, nor do what you need it to do. A computer is supposed to be a relatively simple machine that works for the masses and can be tweaked by the geeks. None of what you are doing sounds remotely exotic. Hang in there.

 

This is one of those times that I start to feel bad...

My Vista machine hasn't had any problems. I've produced several papers, excel documents for a CIS class, and have even participated in online courses and assignments, all without any problems.

Sorry about your troubles...

 

apparently its a hardware problem, im told. which means i worked 18 hour days to pay for a faulty computer now i don't know what to do.

 

If it's still under warranty get that part exchanged. You should be able to find out the faulty hardware, if you don't know it already, through the BSOD, System Event Viewer, etc and finding out where errors are happening. And FTR, I find Vista rock solid on my laptop........... except when I cause it to crash... (bad modded ATI drivers, CIM gets stuckin in an infinite loop when uninstalling). Hope you can get that computer fixed.

 

BSOD's happen. Have been since W95. It's a fact of windows. Macs do it to, but it's a different kind of error, result is the same though
Without a lot more information there's not much anyone can do to help you.

I too think it's silly of Dell to not give you the option of XP, but, the real blame for this is M$ who forced them to sell Vista only. Later they have backpedaled on this a little to allow XP, but it's discouraged.

I personally think Vista is a cool gee-wiz toy and I use it as such.
That is, dual boot XP/Vista. Do my work in XP and when I feel like fiddling with the new OS and getting familiar with it I boot to Vista.

If you want stability and a mature OS stick with XP. If you want the newest bleeding edge toy go with Vista.

If you run a lot of different programs, some of which you have no need to update to the latest greatest this can also throw a wrench into Vista's works. It just doesn't play nice with non-M$ programs that haven't been specifically tweaked to cohabitate with Vista.

If you really hate Vista, you can call M$ and 'downgrade' to XP for a very small fee. But make sure that Dell has drivers for all your hardware first. They may not and you'll end up really frustrated.

 

I've had more than my share of Vista problems, but generally I prefer to be current rather than backlevel or on older technology. There is a very good reason for this: For every security bug that is fixed in most products, including XP, Vista, Office, and many third party products, the vendor specifically identifies the bug in the fix report. This essentially provides the instructions to anyone malevolent enough to exploit it on how to compromise systems that are not patched. Therefore, being current is in my best interest.

 

I would recommend simply figuring out what hardware is causing the crash. Verify that it isn't driver related and then follow-up on with your warranty to get it fixed.

You may want to give Vista a try once the hardware issue is resolved if in fact it is a hardware problem and not a driver issue. The reason being you will not have a ready to go PC on XP with the new hardware. Most people with new PC's designed to run Vista are having a terrible time finding the right drivers for their hardware when they revert to XP.

 

I don't think I've seen one since Windows Mistake Edition.

 

I've seen a few on Vista, a few less on XP, the most I saw were on NT 3.1.

 

What does Jesus have to do with it?

 

A monk has to ask?

 

What in kaylyn's name do you mean by that?