Windoze 7 seems unstable.....

andy_fozzy

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or is it me :shrug:

When I was running XP my PC was so reliable. Never crashed, never froze up.
Now I've upgraded (?) to 7 home edition, it's a different story.
Everyday almost, I get either the BSOD, a total freeze up. Or the damn thing won't even boot sometimes.
It randomly restarts, Windows crash........

I always keep everything up to date, and virus scan often.

I'm seriously considering going back to XP.

Any thoughts?
 
Did you in-place upgrade or a complete fresh install?
 
Have you installed the rapport banking security software?
 
In my experience Win7 is the most stable Windows yet, and I've run them all since 3.1 (except win98 - I'm not a nutter).
So, what's the spec of the pc? I've never been an advocate of upgrading operating systems or even major software beyond one iteration.
I'd suspect a hardware issue, what generally leads to the crashes, have you checked the log files.
 
It's not something to be blamed on Windows7, my main laptop runs for weeks without a restart and I don't think it's ever crashed.
I was so impressed I installed it on my 2003 desktop and 3 year old netbook also
Some of your description sounds symptomatic of overheating problems - dust inside?
 
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Phil V said:
In my experience Win7 is the most stable Windows yet, and I've run them all since 3.1 (except win98 - I'm not a nutter).

Win98 was fine (relatively) it was Millennium and Vista that were tonk!

I have to agree that Win7 is pretty damned good though.
 
Probably your hardware needs updated too?

Easy to prove though, stick XP back on your computer.
 
"They" claim that any blue screens are caused by hardware, and I've only seen a couple of Win7 myself and they've always been hardware based. Does the error message on the BSOD give any hints as to what causes it?
 
Not hardware-related for my recent case Thread Here it was software-related, the rapport banking security software I mentioned above. Started when I installed it and stopped when I removed it.
 
Agreed with ME, vista was fine though.

Vista had issues. Hardware drivers could bring the whole OS down, even though Vista introduced drivers running at ring 3 to stop them being able to cause BSODs. And yet they still did.

The UAC implementation was such utter poo that it was unusable, unless you had a substantial budget for monitor replacement (as they tended to get hurled across the room a lot :naughty: ).

Windows 7 is basically Vista with the bugs ironed out and now that they are it is probably the best OS they've produced since about DOS 5.0. MS were heading in the right direction with Vista, but didn't get it right first time.
 
Vista had issues. Hardware drivers could bring the whole OS down, even though Vista introduced drivers running at ring 3 to stop them being able to cause BSODs. And yet they still did.

The UAC implementation was such utter poo that it was unusable, unless you had a substantial budget for monitor replacement (as they tended to get hurled across the room a lot :naughty: ).

Windows 7 is basically Vista with the bugs ironed out and now that they are it is probably the best OS they've produced since about DOS 5.0. MS were heading in the right direction with Vista, but didn't get it right first time.

poor hardware drivers admittedly were an issue however that was a hardware vendor fault rather than an OS issue.

people conviniently forget the issues and hate that XP had when it was first released..
 
The UAC implementation was such utter poo that it was unusable
I hate UAC. With a vengeance. It is the first thing I turn off on any of my systems (at least for my logins).

I realise what it does and why it may be bad to do this, but that's my problem if something bad happens.
 
70% of BSOD issues are caused by 3rd party drivers. Just saying. :smile:

Out of interest, does anyone here debug mem dumps?
 
Still have a PC running Vista, it is equally as stable as my Win 7 and I have never had any issues with it at all.

People forget that drivers hardware drivers are produced by the manufacturer, and they were seriously off the ball at the Vista release despite MS giving them a year to produce drivers.
 
I have found Windows 7 to be just as good as XP SP3 from a stability point of view, and miles better in a "doesn't do the most stupid things" point of view.

The fact that you can actually use Windows 7 while a file copy operation is going on without every window in explorer turning into a sheet of white, is godsend!
 
we've just gone to Vista at work! One of the Engineering apps we run isn't certified for Win7. to be fair to vista it runs fine here but I do have 12 cores spread across 2 processors and 24Gb of ram :) My core 2 extreme at home which is my main editing machine runs Vista and runs like crap it'd due a rebuild.

Drive issues are the biggest issue with BSOD.
 
Still have a PC running Vista, it is equally as stable as my Win 7 and I have never had any issues with it at all.

I agree. I ran Vista from pretty much the day it was released until Win7 came out. I found Vista was far more reliable than XP ever was.

I was reinstalling XP at least once per year on my devices, my Vista installation lasted 24 months, with zero issues caused by the OS. IME the only people I know who really suffered with Vista were running junk devices.
 
Out of interest, does anyone here debug mem dumps?

Until Microsoft took the NTVDM out of Windows 64 bit versions, I debugged using debug.com (that's a program, not a URL). I still type 'debug' at the command prompt occasionaly, then realise it's not there any more :LOL:.

All that lovely code I wrote to direct program the timer, DMA controller and PD765 (or compatible) chips from user mode code all wiped out by operating system development :crying:
 
Until Microsoft took the NTVDM out of Windows 64 bit versions, I debugged using debug.com (that's a program, not a URL). I still type 'debug' at the command prompt occasionaly, then realise it's not there any more :LOL:.

All that lovely code I wrote to direct program the timer, DMA controller and PD765 (or compatible) chips from user mode code all wiped out by operating system development :crying:

Why not use Windbg?

Also, can't you do the same thing by calling Kernel Mode functions?
 
I've been running Rapport on my W7 machine for 9 months and never had any problems.

Was your PC just about capable of running XP but isn't quite capable of running W7? I'd say hardware too. Memory or mobo.
 
I've been running Rapport on my W7 machine for 9 months and never had any problems.

Was your PC just about capable of running XP but isn't quite capable of running W7? I'd say hardware too. Memory or mobo.

The problem with rapport is widely acknowledged worldwide.
 
Hi guys.
Thanks for the reply, and sorry for my lack of input! Never any time......

Anyway, my system is a custom built one. It's getting quite out of date now I guess, as again, I never have time (or money) to spend on upgrading.
Everything is running at 'stock' speeds, no over-clocking.

Motherboard; Winfast 6150M2MA
CPU; Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5000+ running at 2.60GHz
Memory; 4Gb Crucial Ballistix (3Gb usable obviously) and single channel
Graphics; NVidia GeForce 7600 GT TDH 256Mb

Windows 7 was a fresh installed.
And I've never heard of this Rapport software, so AFAIK it's not installed.

Typically, it seems to have settled down a bit! Haven't had many issues this week - so far.

Never had the slightest problem using XP. And nothing hardware - wise has changed.
Although I did use a newer graphics card driver when I changed to W7.....

I can't remember, but I think I might have used the old drivers disk for the mobo.........

Thanks again, an interesting thread which I'll try to keep up to date with!
 
we've just gone to Vista at work! One of the Engineering apps we run isn't certified for Win7. to be fair to vista it runs fine here but I do have 12 cores spread across 2 processors and 24Gb of ram :) My core 2 extreme at home which is my main editing machine runs Vista and runs like crap it'd due a rebuild.

Drive issues are the biggest issue with BSOD.

Run windows 7 but use Windows 7 XP mode
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

It runs a windows XP virtaul machine on your windows 7 pc. You can either run it as a windowed VM machine or if you install Apps then put them into the All Users start menu, they can be run as normal apps from your windows 7 start menu. They appear in the menu under Windows Virtual PC-Windows XP Mode Applications.
Works a treat. We use it for Old apps that require IE6, or really old apps.

As to the blue screen of death - what's the crash code.
My guess is either you've upgraded and you've got dodgy drivers still installed, or your memory (RAM)is slightly faulty.

Which version of windows 7 are you using?

You're better off installing a fresh build of Windows 7. I'm assuming you have all your applications to reinstall, but I'd recommend a new disk anyway and keep the old one for backup.
Check out Windows Easy Transfer - dead easy to run and transfers every setting/profile/doc etc over to your new PC. You can use it to an external disk, or copy old to new PC.
 
You'll need to turn off automatic restart on failure to see the BSOD code.

Control Panel>System>System protection>Advanced Tab>start up and recovery settings button>Untick auto restart (under system failure).
 
I have found Windows 7 to be completely rock solid the most annoying thing I have found is where windows go full screen when I drag them to the top of the screen. I must admit that I don't use email or office type apps on it and don't actually browse the internet, just jump to specific pages.
 
check your nvidia driver, install the ones off the nvidia site, not the one that comes with the card. We had one release on the works development machines that crashed regularly, updated and never had BSOD again.
 
If its random and keeps crashing, try removing a stick of RAM for a week and see how it goes, put it back in and pull another out and so on.

Random crashes is often down to a bad stick of RAM.
 
people conviniently forget the issues and hate that XP had when it was first released..

This is very true. Until SP2 Win XP was pretty hopeless. Since SP3 it has become very well loved. But Win 7 beats it hands down.

The problem here sounds very much like a drivers issue. Download all the latest drivers for all components and reinstall from scratch. Install all Windows Updates that it requires.

If you continue to have trouble try booting to Safe Mode. If it works OK in Safe Mode then the chances are the problem is software related. If it still causes issues in Safe Mode then hardware is more likely the problem. (Or, as a couple of folk have mentioned, bad RAM)
 
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