I didn't say that there was no AGP support in Vista.  I said that nVidia decided to make a clean break from AGP under Vista:  they haven't (nor, AFAIK, do they have any plans to do so) written Vista drivers for the nForce, nForce2 (again, the audio hardware is a problem for them), or nForce3 chipsets.

Back to the StarForce & SafeDisc:  you had mentioned that they were there in your XP installation, which you (if I read it right) did an in-place upgrade to Vista.  That combo (in-place upgrade + StarForce) will rarely, if ever, go well.  Hell, a clean XP installation can (and has been known to) go all wonky once StarForce hits it.  If you have since done a clean installation of Vista:  sorry.  I missed that part.

I do believe that you're right on one thing:  replacing the hardware (upgrading to a supported chipset, that doesn't require any trickery to get drivers on to) will fix your problems.  :)

Hmm, I've no managed to run a clean install of Vista Home Premium on an A7N8X motherboard for more than 36 hours without an incident. The install is the one provided by the Vista DVD alone - no fiddling with drivers or adding any driver (so no sound), no Windows Update and no other legacy devices. The system seems to be very stable - no file system errors (no chkdsk), no BSOD and no freezing or crashing. A reboot after about 36 hours was successful. Thing is I just know that it isn't as stable as it seems!

Of course a system without sound is useless but I do think that the legacy or Realtek drivers are problematic. I'll probably spend £25 ($50) on an eBay advertised Vista sound card and see if that leads to a stable system. I'm not sure how to completely disable the onboard sound - I don't want to confuse the OS even more than it already has been.

Question is where to draw the line: money spent for the Vista DVD (I was ripped off and sold an OEM DVD as a retail version by a private eBay seller), money for a new adapter (yet to arrive), new memory, a new hard drive and no end of time. Had I known it would be this difficult I wouldn't have even tried. And what do I have at the end of the day? A system without sound and without many of the drivers that allow me to do the things I will need to do. Oh well, you live and you learn I guess.

But, seriously, Vista does seem to be a very nice OS - very pretty and very impressive. I'm a bit astonished that an old A7N8X with a Barton core Athlon 2500+ can use a decent array of applications with so little effort (Photoshop, Office 2007 and Autocad to name just 3 - an no crash. So far!)

Retty:

Hmm, I've no managed to run a clean install of Vista Home Premium on an A7N8X motherboard for more than 36 hours without an incident. The install is the one provided by the Vista DVD alone - no fiddling with drivers or adding any driver (so no sound), no Windows Update and no other legacy devices. The system seems to be very stable - no file system errors (no chkdsk), no BSOD and no freezing or crashing. A reboot after about 36 hours was successful. Thing is I just know that it isn't as stable as it seems!

Of course a system without sound is useless but I do think that the legacy or Realtek drivers are problematic. I'll probably spend £25 ($50) on an eBay advertised Vista sound card and see if that leads to a stable system. I'm not sure how to completely disable the onboard sound - I don't want to confuse the OS even more than it already has been.

Question is where to draw the line: money spent for the Vista DVD (I was ripped off and sold an OEM DVD as a retail version by a private eBay seller), money for a new adapter (yet to arrive), new memory, a new hard drive and no end of time. Had I known it would be this difficult I wouldn't have even tried. And what do I have at the end of the day? A system without sound and without many of the drivers that allow me to do the things I will need to do. Oh well, you live and you learn I guess.

But, seriously, Vista does seem to be a very nice OS - very pretty and very impressive. I'm a bit astonished that an old A7N8X with a Barton core Athlon 2500+ can use a decent array of applications with so little effort (Photoshop, Office 2007 and Autocad to name just 3 - an no crash. So far!)

My system has now been up about 5 1/2 days and is still going strong just to further prove that these BSODs are extremely random.  We've been doing everything from pushing it with video games (even while recording TV), recording and watching lots of TV, to running Prime95 CPU and memory intensive testing programs, to letting it sit idle for hours and hours at a time, etc.

If it wasn't for the BSODs (and the few, relatively minor (but annoying) bugs that I see), I would be very pleased with the performance in Vista.  Boot times are fast, and performance is great almost everywhere, including video games.  The only performance issues I have are very significant and are specifically due to the lack of DXVA with my ATI video card (X1950Pro) and Vista.

What's strange about these BSODs is they truly seem random.  It could BSOD during booting, 15 minutes after booting, 6 hours after booting or more than 5 1/2 days after booting.  Also there doesn't seem to be anything in particular I can do to make it BSOD (other than transfer 100's of GB worth of files to/from the USB drive; that BSODs it every time - eventually, and corrupts the USB drive's file system). 

Retty, is your board the same as mine or is it the base A7N8X?  Mine is the A7N8X-E Deluxe which I believe uses a slightly different chipset (newer version, faster FSB, and with some different features), has the built in Wi-Fi (not in use), and has the audio with Soundstorm Dolby Digital Live.  Does yours have the on-board Sata RAID controller like the deluxe? 

You system is definitely doing better than mine.  My system absolutely refuses to make it through the first boot after a fresh or upgraded Vista install.  I have done this at least 10 times and not once has it made it past the performance test (most of the time it doesn't even make it that far).

Anyway, its possible that there are enough differences that yours runs well with the Microsoft drivers and mine won't.  Its also remotely possible that there is some other problem with my motherboard (or PSU or ?) that Vista brings out and the native nVidia drivers help to cover up somehow.

To the theory that the audio could be causing the issues, I haven't specifically tried it with the nForce memory controller driver, the nForce SMBus driver and no audio driver.  If the system wasn't already able to run 5 1/2 days (once) without a BSOD, that might be interesting because if it is only the sound causing the instabilities it would be a relatively easy fix to disable the on-board audio, throw in a cheap audio card and see if that improves the stability.  If that made it rock solid I would be willing to invest in a decent sound card (I could also use it in the next HTPC build).

One major problem I've been having is with the BSODs being so completely random, its impossible to make a change to the system and "measure" a change in stability (unless I'm making single changes per month and counting BSODs or something).

When I hear someone claiming their system is stable in Vista, I also often wonder what their definition of stable really is.  Myself, I don't consider a system truly stable unless it can run months on end without any system crashes.  If a system is able to run 2 days without a crash, that might be "stable" to a gamer who doesn't mind a reboot once in a while.  I also wonder how stable Vista really is on a "perfect" system?

My HTPC never really needed to be rebooted in MCE2005.  It would just run and run, no matter what I threw at it.  Sure the odd application would screw up once in a blue moon, but I never saw any BSODs ever.  I wish it was the same for Vista and keep wondering if possibly some (if not all) of these BSODs are actually issues with Vista itself.  I've spent several hours, reading about the new driver model in Vista and how, by running the drivers in the user core instead of the kernel, the Vista core is supposed to be so much more stable.  Microsoft claims that if a driver crashes in Vista, that most of the time just the driver should crash, not the entire operating system.  I've never experienced a single "driver crash" with Vista ever.  In my (limited) experience with Vista, everything works perfectly 99.9% of the time (and very smoothly with quick response to my interactions), and then without a single hint of any system trouble in any way, the system BSODs and automatically reboots.

Retty, to disable the on-board sound I would first uninstall any sound applications through add/remove programs, then go into device manager and uninstall any audio devices (you might want to reboot first if it wants to after you remove the sound applications - cancelling any driver installations on the reboot), then reboot and hit "del" to get into the BIOS right away (don't let it reboot because it will likely re-install the audio drivers again).  In the BIOS you need to disable the on-board audio and then finally save changes and reboot.  After a boot there shouldn't be any audio devices detected, nor any audio drivers running (check in device manager).

Some other things you may as well turn off in the BIOS that are not supported in Vista (I have not looked for drivers though) are the on-board game port and the MIDI port.

Cup:

Back to the StarForce & SafeDisc:  you had mentioned that they were there in your XP installation, which you (if I read it right) did an in-place upgrade to Vista.  That combo (in-place upgrade + StarForce) will rarely, if ever, go well.  Hell, a clean XP installation can (and has been known to) go all wonky once StarForce hits it.  If you have since done a clean installation of Vista:  sorry.  I missed that part.

I've tried just about everything a "semi-normal" (and obsessed) user would to get Vista to install:

Prior to starting I bought a new hard drive, using SeaTools I imaged the old boot drive (twice), cloned it to a 3 partitions on the new drive, and set up a multi-boot so I could access all of the cloned images (tweaking the "MountedDevices" so the booted image is always the C-drive).  I then tested each boot, renamed the drive partitions so I knew what was what (and to make sure the right drive was being accessed and written to).  I planned 3 attempts:  upgrade advisor, upgrade advisor plus some extra cleanup, and clean install - but the number of attempts grew very quickly.  The plan was to test out each upgrade and see what worked the best...

1.  Follow the Upgrade Advisers advice to the letter and upgrade the MCE2005 system, allowing the install to search and install updates from Microsoft (first boot BSOD).

2.  In addition, remove any software I thought might not be supported in Vista (first boot BSOD).

3.  In addition, remove all of the audio and motherboard drivers and starforce (first boot BSOD, but it made it much farther before finally BSOD'ing and annoyingly auto-rolling back to XP).

4.  Tried 3 and 1 without allowing the install to use updates from Microsoft (first boot BSOD on each).

5.  Clean Vista install with Microsoft updates (still BSODs during the first boot into Vista).

6.  Disabled some devices in BIOS, removed all but one hard drive, booted from DVD, formatted drive with installer (figured it was one less variable), clean Vista install, BSOD during first boot during performance test (basically finished booting and was doing "performance tuning" when it BSOD'd), but I then rebooted and kept fighting with it (BSOD'ing over and over) until I slowly found a set of drivers and Microsoft updates that didn't seem horribly unstable and kept going with it to "check out Vista".  That is where I am today but I have tried additional Vista installs since.

7.  Wiped out just about everything from within MCE2005 first (every bit of software, drivers, etc. - just left the Media Center configuration for recordings, etc.) (first boot BSOD).

8.  Simply upgrade the fully functional and stable MCE2005 system as it was - figured "why not others says it worked for them" (first boot BSOD).

9.  Clean Vista install with Microsoft updates and a reduced set of hardware (still first boot BSOD).

10.  Fresh XP install followed by a fresh Vista install (just like every other Vista install it BSODs sometime during the first boot and rolls back to XP)

11.  Partially ripped computer apart, disconnecting SATA drives, other data drives, turning off more in the BIOS then a clean Vista install booted from DVD (still BSOD during first boot).

Not once did a single attempt ever fully make it through the first boot all the way into the Vista desktop (actually the desktop showed up a few times, but the system was still finishing off "setup stuff").

I probably did a few more also.  What would sometimes happen is I would start the "upgrade" process and leave the room to do something, Vista would install, reboot, BSOD, automatically reboot, roll back to XP and then reboot into XP again.  I'd end up back in XP by the time I came back in the room and would wonder "what happened?" so I'd try it again (and leave the room...).

My next step I figure would be to create a custom Vista install, adding the particular drivers that "seem" to provide the maximum stability and then try to install from that.  Hopefully it would make it through the performance test (I've run the test several times since installing all these drivers and it hasn't BSOD during the test yet).  I haven't got around to researching how to make a custom Vista install with particular device drivers that automatically install, but I have done it with XP so I expect it can be done.

Another thought I had was to try again, but remove the Saphire X1950Pro and install my previous nVidia 6800.  There was a significant improvement to stability after installing the drivers off the ATI site to replace the Microsoft drivers so I wonder if the video card could be an issue.  Also after "upgrading" to Catalyst 7.5, the stability seems to have improved a fair bit over 7.4.   Another thing I did try in another attempt (not mentioned above) is to "first Vista boot" into safe mode (it didn't work - it came up with a "Vista couldn't complete the installation" error).

After writing this list, one thing I just thought of that I did not try is to first boot into Vista, while trying to enable VGA mode, but other than that, using a normal boot.

From the above you can see why I say this has been by far the most frustrating OS "upgrade" I have ever attempted (and I've experienced some pretty frustrating installs in the past, especially when I used to look after a large number of semi-custom high end SGI workstations (Irix OS) many years ago).

To make matters worse, the above was only the beginning to a much larger BSOD chasing exercise that is really over my head and I've been fighting with for 3 weeks.

To really make my life difficult, I decided to finally activate my Vista install (only a few days left) only to find out that my Vista license only works if I actually perform a true upgrade from XP.  It pops up with the following message:

Code:
0xC004F061

Description:
  The Software Licensing Service determined that this specified product
key can only be used for upgrading, not for clean installations

So basically, unless I'm willing to purchase a new "clean install" license for Vista, I'm going to have to throw away this semi-functional installation and figure out a way to upgrade from XP.  Really with all of the incredible instability I don't think upgrading from a previous OS is a good idea in my situation and I don't understand why Microsoft suddenly dropped the ability to use another method to validate my current ownership of XP.

On top of that, if I was to successfully upgrade from my XP install to Vista, my understanding is this will automatically deactivate and disable my XP MCE2005 license so I won't be able to keep a functional dual boot.  Again with the state of Vista on my system, this obviously is not an option and the fully functional and stable installation of MCE2005 needs to remain installed.  Again, I don't understand why Microsoft doesn't lock the two operating systems to the same computer if they want me to "use up" my old MCE2005 install.  Its not like I can run 2 operating systems simultaneously so why not allow my upgrade to clean install on another partition and node lock the two licenses together on this particular system, while allowing a multi-boot into one or the other OS.

So now what do I do?  Vista is going to "shut down" in a couple of days since I can't activate it.  I guess my best "legal" option is to figure out a way to force this thing to "upgrade" from XP (possibly a very basic, fresh install with no extra drivers, maybe a different video card, or maybe first booting into VGA only in normal mode will work, or maybe figure out how to build a "custom Vista install" with the "best" drivers) and then not activate it (leaving XP working) until the very end of the new 30 day activation allowance.

What a nightmare!

Per my previous post, I can't get Vista to successfully upgrade my MCE2005 install and it refuses to activate because I purchased an upgrade instead of a clean Vista install (my intention was always to upgrade once Vista was proven stable and functional).

Does anyone know if I can actually perform an upgrade from another version of windows (2000 for example - I still have a few licenses of it).  I know the Vista license I have says it is only for an XP MCE2005 upgrade to Vista Home Premium, but if I go through the trouble of installing 2000 is it possible Vista might both be able to upgrade and activate as an upgrade from 2000?

1/2 way through the 6th day without a BSOD...

One additional and significant change I made to the setup that I forgot to post here (that might be helping):

Around the same time as uninstalling OneCare I also changed the hardware abstraction layer (HAL) being used from "ACPIx86" to a slightly less sophisticated one: "Advanced Configuration and Power Interface".

My understanding of the "advertised" differences between the two is "ACPIx86" fully supports all of the ACPI BIOS flags, including multiple and single CPUs, while "Advanced Configuration and Power Interface" only supports single CPUs (my guess is there may be other "real" differences also).  Since the HAL is what essentially talks at the lowest level, directly with the system hardware, using a different HAL could potentially have a huge effect on system stability.

To do this you have to get into the Device Manager and "update" the driver for "Computer" and manually choose the one you want.  One thing to consider is once you have downgraded the HAL you cannot easily upgrade back to ACPIx86 again.  With Vista and Vista only, there is a setting you can make to the boot loader (that initiates the booting of Vista) to request the system to rescan and reselect the most appropriate HAL.  According to some of my Google searches it doesn't always work though and some guys have had to reinstall Vista to enable multiple CPUs again (since our motherboards don't support multiple CPUs this shouldn't be an issue for us).

HT Slider:

My system has now been up about 5 1/2 days and is still going strong just to further prove that these BSODs are extremely random.  We've been doing everything from pushing it with video games (even while recording TV), recording and watching lots of TV, to running Prime95 CPU and memory intensive testing programs, to letting it sit idle for hours and hours at a time, etc.

If it wasn't for the BSODs (and the few, relatively minor (but annoying) bugs that I see), I would be very pleased with the performance in Vista.  Boot times are fast, and performance is great almost everywhere, including video games.  The only performance issues I have are very significant and are specifically due to the lack of DXVA with my ATI video card (X1950Pro) and Vista.

What's strange about these BSODs is they truly seem random.  It could BSOD during booting, 15 minutes after booting, 6 hours after booting or more than 5 1/2 days after booting.  Also there doesn't seem to be anything in particular I can do to make it BSOD (other than transfer 100's of GB worth of files to/from the USB drive; that BSODs it every time - eventually, and corrupts the USB drive's file system). 

Retty, is your board the same as mine or is it the base A7N8X?  Mine is the A7N8X-E Deluxe which I believe uses a slightly different chipset (newer version, faster FSB, and with some different features), has the built in Wi-Fi (not in use), and has the audio with Soundstorm Dolby Digital Live.  Does yours have the on-board Sata RAID controller like the deluxe? 

You system is definitely doing better than mine.  My system absolutely refuses to make it through the first boot after a fresh or upgraded Vista install.  I have done this at least 10 times and not once has it made it past the performance test (most of the time it doesn't even make it that far).

Anyway, its possible that there are enough differences that yours runs well with the Microsoft drivers and mine won't.  Its also remotely possible that there is some other problem with my motherboard (or PSU or ?) that Vista brings out and the native nVidia drivers help to cover up somehow.

To the theory that the audio could be causing the issues, I haven't specifically tried it with the nForce memory controller driver, the nForce SMBus driver and no audio driver.  If the system wasn't already able to run 5 1/2 days (once) without a BSOD, that might be interesting because if it is only the sound causing the instabilities it would be a relatively easy fix to disable the on-board audio, throw in a cheap audio card and see if that improves the stability.  If that made it rock solid I would be willing to invest in a decent sound card (I could also use it in the next HTPC build).

One major problem I've been having is with the BSODs being so completely random, its impossible to make a change to the system and "measure" a change in stability (unless I'm making single changes per month and counting BSODs or something).

When I hear someone claiming their system is stable in Vista, I also often wonder what their definition of stable really is.  Myself, I don't consider a system truly stable unless it can run months on end without any system crashes.  If a system is able to run 2 days without a crash, that might be "stable" to a gamer who doesn't mind a reboot once in a while.  I also wonder how stable Vista really is on a "perfect" system?

My HTPC never really needed to be rebooted in MCE2005.  It would just run and run, no matter what I threw at it.  Sure the odd application would screw up once in a blue moon, but I never saw any BSODs ever.  I wish it was the same for Vista and keep wondering if possibly some (if not all) of these BSODs are actually issues with Vista itself.  I've spent several hours, reading about the new driver model in Vista and how, by running the drivers in the user core instead of the kernel, the Vista core is supposed to be so much more stable.  Microsoft claims that if a driver crashes in Vista, that most of the time just the driver should crash, not the entire operating system.  I've never experienced a single "driver crash" with Vista ever.  In my (limited) experience with Vista, everything works perfectly 99.9% of the time (and very smoothly with quick response to my interactions), and then without a single hint of any system trouble in any way, the system BSODs and automatically reboots.

Retty, to disable the on-board sound I would first uninstall any sound applications through add/remove programs, then go into device manager and uninstall any audio devices (you might want to reboot first if it wants to after you remove the sound applications - cancelling any driver installations on the reboot), then reboot and hit "del" to get into the BIOS right away (don't let it reboot because it will likely re-install the audio drivers again).  In the BIOS you need to disable the on-board audio and then finally save changes and reboot.  After a boot there shouldn't be any audio devices detected, nor any audio drivers running (check in device manager).

Some other things you may as well turn off in the BIOS that are not supported in Vista (I have not looked for drivers though) are the on-board game port and the MIDI port.

Sorry - I've been away from a PC for a day or so and haven't been able to read/respond to posts. Thank you for the information on disabling sound - it's much appreciated.

I am using an A7N8X Deluxe board but one of the earlier models - it's an A7N8X-C Deluxe which has the most of the basic hardware features as yours including the Sata RAID controller but it doesn't have built in Wi-Fi. It runs at a slower FSB speed than yours but it has a very similar chipset. I'm using a very early BIOS version - 1002 - partly because I never had the need to update the BIOS.

I received a Vista compatible wireless adapter today and so downloaded various Windows Updates including the relevant Realtek sound driver and the NVidia MCP Audio processing unit. It's early days yet and I believe that the system is not stable but, so far, 6 hours and counting there has been no crash or file system corruption since the update.

I not using any of the advertised sound, SMBus or other driver workarounds. I have managed to replicate the huge problems that occurred when I tried to use the various documented driver installation workarounds. The consequences for me of using the various workarounds are so disastrous that only a reinstall of Vista can fix the resulting file system corruption problems.

I'm not going to try to access 5.1 sound and I'm going to have to be content with 2 channel stereo sound - there's just no way that I can create a stable Vista install with the 5.1 sound hacks that are documented. The workarounds seem to mess with Vista to the extent that the file system is wrecked beyond the capabilities of Vista chkdsk (and although XP chkdsk claims to fix the problems they aren't fixed). I don't think it is just the sound workarounds that cause my problem although they do seem to break the camel's back - I first noticed problems before I installed the NVmixer and Realtek equivalent 5.1 support and immediately after I installed the SMBus driver.

I don't think that my system is at all stable. I'm waiting for the problems to appear and I have no doubt at all that they will.

It is odd though that you can't even get past the first boot on a clean install. Let me know if you would like me to post parts of my BIOS settings - could it be possible that there is some sort of memory read/write function that is causing problems with Vista and the A7N8X?

The problem you describe - and for that matter my file system corruption problem - reminds me very much of a problem I had a couple of yeas ago with XP when using what turned out to be incorrectly labelled and mismatched memory. Obviously I'm not suggesting that's the case here but I notice that the MVP I mentioned in the microsoft.public.windows.vista.file_management group says that he is running Vista on 5 A7N8X version 2 Deluxe boards (later versions than mine and ? the same or similar version as yours). In terms of basic hardware realities it seems therefore that at least some people can get past the first boot without BSOD. As I say let me know if I can describe BIOS settings. Still, whilst I haven't had the BSOD problem I have had other serious problems that have killed a number of installs and I know that my current install will go belly up before long.

I don't think that there is any way of using the upgrade copy activation check to validate a clean install. The best option is probably to buy a relatively inexpensive OEM key. I haven't activated mine yet and having been already ripped off by an eBay seller who sold me an OEM version as a full retail version I'm fully expecting that the key will be invalid.

But if I can use the A7N8X PC with Vista for its media centre like capabilities I may be tempted to throw a little bit of good money after bad.

I don't understand the file corruption issues you've had.  Even with all the BSODs, I haven't really seen any file corruption at all (only one time did a temp file show up as corrupt).

My system did finally crash last night after running 7+ days.  Strangely it didn't actually BSOD, but instead this time the whole system just locked up and stopped responding while we were watching TV.  I had to hit reset to reboot it and its been up fine ever since.

I'm baffled at the difference in how our systems are behaving.  I can't get my system to run hardly at all until I install a couple of nvidia motherboard drivers, yet yours appears to be the opposite.

As I mentioned earlier, I did purchase a new power supply and I'll finish installing it later today.  Even though it seems like a bit of a long shot, I'm going to give it a try, followed shortly by another Vista upgrade attempt (from a fresh XP install).

As far as our systems and how they compare, I am running the latest BIOS, 1013 and have been since I first purchased the motherboard (pretty much as soon as I got the motherboard I ran the ASUS live update and it replaced 1012 with 1013).

Other than disabling the hardware that I'm not using (I also tried a Vista install with totally default settings), the BIOS is using default settings (no overclocking, memory timing tweaks, etc.).  Actually that's not 100% true.  I did increase the CPU voltage by 0.025V because when I first got the system it used to lock up after 10+ hours when stress testing it and making this single change fixed it (I've run memory tests and CPU stress tests literally for days without any problems since and have retested both for a good 20 hours since I installed Vista also).  I haven't tried lowering the voltage back to spec.

My system is also quite heavily loaded.  As well as the relatively power hungry X1950Pro 512MB video card (which BTW, several people online are complaining is unstable in Vista with their systems - many BSODs for them too), my system has 5 hard drives (1.5 TB or storage total), 1.5GB of RAM, a power hungry XP 3200+ CPU, as well as the PVR-250.  Whenever I use any of the on-line power supply calculators, my system ends up with a recommended 500-550 Watts.  Currently the Enermax power supply in it only supplies 485W and it has been in there since day 1, running 24-7 for close to 3 years now.  One possible theory to my system's trouble is Vista some how uses more peak power than XP in the way it uses the hardware and this drives up the power supply requirements just enough to push my system over the edge.  One example I have thought of is Vista does shut down and start up the hard drives again.  When a drive spins back up there must be a larger power demand for a short period of time compared to leaving them running all the time (as they did in XP).  Possibly 2 spinning up at the same time, combined with a moderate amount of processing pushes it over the edge?

I'll let you know how the power supply upgrade goes.  I actually already started it, but the new PSU is about 1/2 an inch too large for the case so I've completely pulled the system apart (bare chassis right now) and will have to make a few "case mods".  Our HTPC hasn't been off-line this long in years.

I don't understand the differences in the way the 2 very similar systems are behaving either.

My file corruption issues - which nuked the Vista install every time they appeared - haven't returned so far but there's no way that I'm going to test the Nvidia Mixer and other 5.1 drivers again because I know that they were responsible for breaking the system. As I say though I do think that my attempts to update the SMBus driver and other drivers through the publishes workarounds also caused problems. I seem to be having the best results when just using the install DVD and Windows Update.

Also, the DVD install without any Windows Update patches or any other driver workarounds does provide a relatively stable system for me. I'm using an old ATI Radeon 9500 card: the install DVD loads the relevant drivers and the card works well.

I hope that what it is preventing your system from getting past first boot will not remain a mystery. Maybe the ATI card is causing a problem? It's interesting reading your post because I was just about to invest in a X1950Pro card but I'm not going to buy one now (at least not for an A7N8X board). Tweaking the CPU voltage by 0.025V shouldn't make a difference but I wonder why the CPU voltage needed to be tweaked from default in the first place?

I wonder if the trial removal of the X1950 card will solve the problem of trying to get past first boot without BSOD?

Btw, although this almost certainly won't touch the central problem are you aware that there is a known issue with Vista and certain AV progs (and other progs that touch upon the flaw):

http://transcode360.co.uk/files/folders/t360/entry675.aspx

I applied the relevant fix (which isn't publicly available) and it fixed a number of problems I was having with streaming to a Media Extender device.

Retty:

Btw, although this almost certainly won't touch the central problem are you aware that there is a known issue with Vista and certain AV progs (and other progs that touch upon the flaw):

http://transcode360.co.uk/files/folders/t360/entry675.aspx

I applied the relevant fix (which isn't publicly available) and it fixed a number of problems I was having with streaming to a Media Extender device.

That link is a little vague and Microsoft's explanation for the problem (linked from within your link) is incredibly non-explanatory.

What is the issue exactly?

Since I uninstalled OneCare my system seems to be much more stable and I haven't been getting any of the "tuner not found" messages.  Is this related?

HT Slider:

Retty:

Btw, although this almost certainly won't touch the central problem are you aware that there is a known issue with Vista and certain AV progs (and other progs that touch upon the flaw):

http://transcode360.co.uk/files/folders/t360/entry675.aspx

I applied the relevant fix (which isn't publicly available) and it fixed a number of problems I was having with streaming to a Media Extender device.

That link is a little vague and Microsoft's explanation for the problem (linked from within your link) is incredibly non-explanatory.

What is the issue exactly?

Since I uninstalled OneCare my system seems to be much more stable and I haven't been getting any of the "tuner not found" messages.  Is this related?

It's possible that it was responsible for the error messages. I couldn't, for example, get Transcode 360 to work until I installed the patch and then it worked fine (or rather other problems then appeared connected with occasionally stuttering playback and termination of videos.) Prior to installing the patch the 360 was unable to access the PC when using the transcode function in the "More" menu on Media Centre. I received a message telling me that there had been a "Video error" and that the required video codec files could not be found.

I don't understand the details of the patch but it seems that with Vista it's possible for an essential service (essential to Media Centre) to be uninstalled by an unrelated process before the service can be used. At least that's how I understand it.

Some people have reported problems with using the patch - PCs slowing down, crashing and so on. It isn't a publicly available patch either and MS have suggested that it should be used only if you are having the problems which the patch is supposed to fix. One of the AV packages that causes a problem is Avast which obviously is a popular AV package because it's free. However people have reported problems with a wide range of AV progs - it seems that the majority of AV progs cause the problem with Vista.

I'm still trying to decide if my motherboard should or should not have been listed as supported by Microsoft's Upgrade Advisor...At the time I installed I would say a definite "not supported".

I installed the new power supply a couple of days ago and so far it has been working "almost" flawlessly again.

I have now updated the video driver to Catalyst 7.6 and installed the latest Microsoft patches and Media Center rollup through Windows Update so this might be helping things a little.

The one and only issue I did see was another blue screen.  After uninstalling Catalyst 7.5 and attempting to reboot - just as the computer was at the point it should have rebooted a blue screen popped up instead (after logging out, saving, etc.).  I suspect this is some issue with the driver and not my motherboard.

Since then, with Catalyst 7.6 running, it has again been running perfectly, with everything, including 5.1 Dolby Digital Live working flawlessly.

My next challenge is the 30 day Vista install expires in 2 days and I still haven't figured out how to use my license without an upgrade and reinstalling everything.  Hopefully the upgrade will actually work this time.  If not I'll be stuck with 30 days and not being able to use the Vista license that I purchased again.  This is a major pain.  I've been using Microsoft operating systems since the 80's and I've never seen an issue where I can't even use the license that I purchased before.  Upgrades in the past allow you to provide "proof" of an existing operating system by inserting a CD or disk that contained the previous version.  I guess this is more of Microsoft's DRM mentality affecting us customers in a negative way.

Vista licensing is a pain. I notice that during installation you are given the option to perform an "upgrade" or a clean install. You aren't told that the your key will lead to the eventual activation of only one option (with an upgrade or an oem version).

It is a shame, as you say, that it isn't possible to perform an upgrade install by simply providing proof of ownership of a prior OS/key.

But congratulations - it sounds like you are having some success with system stability and, in terms of being able to use 5.1 surround sound, more success than I have had. I'm atually too afraid to even try the messing with the driver files again! 

I don't think congratulations are in order.  My Vista install is now completely dead.

Yesterday, on the phone, I tried to convinced Microsoft to activate my functional Vista install using some other proof (giving them my MCE2005 license number, etc.) and they wouldn't do it.  They insisted that I have to actually upgrade from XP and there are no other options.

After about 2 hours on hold and bouncing around between customer support and tech support, tech support got to work trying to help me upgrade to Vista (for me, about my 15th upgrade attempt!).

After my multiple failures and Microsoft researching my hardware, they decided to try to upgrade from my functional Vista to Vista and I assume then manually activate Vista.  They still insisted that we had to actually perform an upgrade overtop of a current install though (seemed very strange to me - why not just activate my current functional Vista!).  In reality I would prefer to have an install/upgrade complete successfully to ensure the OS is installed properly.

Per my usual experience, after 5 additional hours working with tech support, Vista would still only BSOD during the first boot (or refuse to boot at all).  I sent them a bunch of diagnostic files and they said they'd call me back between 9 and 11 AM the next day (today).

After the 7 hours on the phone with Microsoft I kept at for another 5 hours.  I again tried physically removing hardware, shutting everything down in the BIOS, manually removing drivers, etc.  Nothing worked and Vista keeps BSOD'ing during that first critical boot where the drivers are loaded for the first time and then the system gets configured.  Even with virtually no hardware physically installed this system still BSODs on that first boot.  Just for kicks I ran both the Vista memory tests again and then ran Memtest 3.2 overnight.  As usual there are no memory problems.

Right now I'm back to my 100% stable MCE2005 install (this system has not once ever experienced a BSOD in MCE2005).  I do also have an image stored of my functional Vista install that has now past the 30 day grace period.

The only way I have been able to get Vista to install is through a clean install and then after that first boot BSOD, I can then reboot again and get the SMBus, nVidia memory driver, and all of the Microsoft updates installed (during multiple BSODs which finally subside).

Microsoft didn't call between 9 and 11 AM.  I waited until 1 PM and called Microsoft back.  This time they suggested I should go out and purchase a 2nd full license for Vista Home Premium so I can simply activate my current, functional Vista install.  I wasn't impressed.  After that they said, OK, we'll continue to help you upgrade.  We'll call you back tomorrow at 9 AM...

Tomorrow the issue is being escalated to Microsoft's research department (I think that's what they called them).  Hopefully they'll be able to get Vista to upgrade and then activate.

At least Microsoft is providing free tech support.  In the past, tech support from Microsoft has always required me paying for it.

Does anyone know if there are different versions of Vista DVDs?  I wonder if the particular set of drivers and update status is simply unable to run on my system and if a newer or older version of the Vista DVD might install without any issues?