2
Well, if you remember, I built a Vista Ultimate x64 system a while back and really only used it to watch cable TV. My XP x64 main system is getting a little long in tooth so I thought it may be a good idea to start the change over before the older system has an unrecoverable problem and all is lost. The Vista system has an AMD 5200 AM2, Gigabyte GA-M55SLI-S4 (rev. 1.0), 8 GB Micron DDR2-667, Nvidia 8500 x 2 in SLI, Seagate 320 GB 7200.10 SATA II HDD, Creative Audigy 4. When the system was set up as the TV watcher, it also had a MSI TV@nywhere Tuner Card. When I went to set the system up as a production system, I removed the Tuner Card and all the software. I also uninstalled anything that was not going to be needed. The system always ran perfectly as the TV watcher.
I loaded Office Ultimate 2007, Microsoft Money Plus, and a few small programs that I use all the time like Paint.NET and Winsnap. Everything seemed to be working pretty good. Nothing compared to the old XP x64 system but overall, acceptable. I restored all my backups to Outlook, Money, etc and all seemed to go in and be usable. Still not with the speed and smoothness of the old system but, like I said, acceptable. I caught up all the Vista updates in that the system had been under a desk for a while. Everything seemed OK but the system would bog down pretty fast. With the CPU that is in the system and 8 GB RAM, I really could not see how or why it would just slow down like molasseses. Not only would the computing slow down but the internet and internal network as well. Then I was notified by the system that SP1 was available. There had been a few error notifications from Vista like "the last problem was caused by the Nvidia graphics drivers". What problem? I had not seen nor experienced any sort of problem. The Nvidia drivers are the ones that have been installed since I installed the two 8500 in SLI. The drivers have always worked well so I have not updated them. There were several odd messeges like that. Then came the time to install SP1 with the thought that maybe (?) some of the problems may be smoothed out. The forever installation continued and rebooted the system. Stage 1, 100%, Stage 2, 100%, Stage 3, 100%, and then the message that the SP1 did not install and all changes were being reversed. The uninstall took forever...again. Then the problems really started. System hangs, graphics distortions in normal use, program hangs, web pages not being found yet hit "refresh" and there the page appears, a very, very slow 6MB DSL connection yet on the other systems on the network, the DSL was normal. There was nothing stated as to why SP1 did not install. No log file. No read me file. Nothing at all except the notification that it did not install. It finally got so bad that I am now back on the old XP x64 system. I guess I will install XP X64 SP2 on the 5200 system since Vista doesn't seem to want to work. I tought about a clean install of Ultimate x64 but there is a great fear that, since it is Vista, nothing would change and I would end up formating and installing XP x64 anyway.
Sorry about the novel here guys but I wanted you to fully understand what went on and see if any of you have a thought or idea or two before I wipe it out and install XP x64. I can at least say that I tried Vista in a production system and it miserably failed. I wish I could go with a 64 bit version Server 2008 like some of you have but that is outside my budget. I know there are trial editions that go to 240 days I think but this is for my main production system so I don't want to risk the reload and honestly I don't have the time for that. Any ideas or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for listening...Bill.
There are known issues with SP1 and the AMD...but i thought they fixed it? Hmmm. Sorry to hear about that Bill. I haven't messed around on my home box in a while...but i am planning to do a clean install of Vista Ultimate x64 again (big suprise huh?) since Server 2008 x64 isn't working quite the way i wanted as my main OS (another big surprise huh?!). Then again, i mostly use my lappy now-a-days. 
