Good news you can still use Vista after the 30 days period, you can extend the activation deadline of editions such as Vista Home Premium and Vista Business up to four months past the original install date.

Microsoft provides a command-line program in Vista known as the Software Licensing Manager (SLMGR) or slmgr.vbs.This is a Visual Basic script that resides in c:\windows\system32. You can read the contents of this script file with any text editor or a professional development environment.

Among other things, slmgr.vbs has a function that pushes Vista's activation deadline out to 30 days from the date the command is run. From the Vista desktop, take the following steps on a machine on which Vista hasn't yet been activated:

Step 1. Open a command window with admin privileges. Click Vista's start button and type cmd into the Search box. Rather than pressing Enter, instead press Ctrl+Shift+Enter to open the command window with elevated privileges. If you're asked for a username and password, provide the ones that log you into your domain. On a single-user copy of Vista, a login shouldn't be necessary. (My thanks to Serdar Yegulalp for the elevation trick.).

Step 2. Switch to the command-line shell handler. Running script commands in a window will result in irritating pop-up messages unless you change to the character-mode version of Windows Script Host. To do this, enter the following command at the prompt:

cscript /h:cscript

Step 3. Familiarize yourself with SLMGR. Executed with no parameters, slmgr displays a screen of help text. With the parameters -dli (display license information) or -xpr (expiration), the program displays the activation deadline, either in minutes remaining or as a date and time, respectively.

To see the effect of these commands, enter the following in the command window, one at a time:

slmgr
slmgr -dli
slmgr -xpr

If you've just installed Vista, the activation deadline will be 43,200 minutes in the future, which translates to 30 days. If Vista was installed some time ago, the remaining time shown will be less.

In my testing, each command required quite a long time to provide a response — as much as one minute. Be patient and wait for the results from each command before trying the next. If you didn't elevate your command window to have admin privileges in Step 1, you'll see only error messages.

Step 4. Extend Vista's activation deadline. The parameter -rearm changes the activation deadline to 30 days from today. SLMGR allows this extension to take place only three times. If you extend the deadline the day after you install Vista, you'll get an extension of only one day, not an additional 30 days.

The following command changes the activation deadline to 30 days after the command is invoked:

slmgr -rearm

If the operation worked, you should see the message, "Command completed successfully. Please restart the system for the changes to take effect."

It's not clear where SLMGR stores the number of times that it's been used to push the activation deadline back. If this number is stored in the Registry or in a system file, it's likely that hackers will quickly find a way to eliminate even the three-extension limit.

Step 5. Reboot and test. A reboot is required to make the extension take effect. After the Vista desktop loads, you should repeat steps 1 and 3 to check on your new activation deadline.

HT Slider:

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!).

I'm sorry to hear that you've had more problems. Did you have any success with MS Support the following day?

It's just a thought but is there any way that you could try swapping your memory sticks for memory borrowed from somewhere else? Could it be a memory problem that is not showing itself under XP but is showing itself under Vista?

I think the install DVDs are, at present, all the same in terms of driver versions.

I notice changes every day in the relationship between motherboard and OS. For example initially Everest Home Edition (the free edition) was able to return motherboard sensor information from Vista (CPU temperature and so on). The sensor information is, as of 2 days ago, no longer available from within Vista although it still works fine from XP. No explanation and no error message - just a blank screen where sensor information should be. But it did work initially.

I know that there are issues which can present themselves following an apparently successful install of Vista which, days later and without any tinkering with drivers, can render the system unstable.

As an absolute last resort - and I don't know if you can justify throwing yet more money after this problem - the option (if MS isn't willing or able to activate your functional install) may be to buy an oem license. I was severely ripped off on eBay in this regard but it is possible to buy an oem license at a fairly reasonable price elsewhere.

Retty:

I'm sorry to hear that you've had more problems. Did you have any success with MS Support the following day?

I spent literally all of the next day working on Vista.  The "top level" support at Microsoft really wasn't any more helpful than the first guy - other than to eventually confirm that he will, once we get the system up and running stable, provide me with a method to activate it.

We would work out a plan for me to work on, and I would work on it.   When it blew up again, I'd send him some files, we'd discuss additional ideas and I'd again, on my own, work on it.

I ended up literally pulling my entire system apart and ended up with the video card, the DVD reader and one hard drive installed.  With absolutely everything disabled in the BIOS, Vista still blue screens on the first boot if updates are included.  Also it doesn't matter if "we" suppress migration of drivers, allow installation updates, etc. it still crashes when the updates are installed.

The one and only way Vista was able to install without any blue screens was to do a clean install from DVD without any Microsoft updates (a Vista upgrade over Vista BSODs too) and to turn off future automatic updates during the installation.  After the successful first boot and performance test, I would then immediately go into the devices and change "Computer" from ACPIx86 to use the basic ACPI HAL (if I didn't it would still BSOD after a short while).  After a reboot, Vista then appears to be stable.  By installing the Microsoft updates one by one, we found that as soon as the SM Bus driver was installed/automatically updated, Vista would start BSOD'ing again over and over.  I must have clean installed Vista another 1/2 a dozen times before I finally had a BSOD free install up and running.

I was quite disappointed though to find out that the tech helping me really wasn't able to provide any real solutions or explanations for the BSODs.  Some of the questions I really wanted to find out were:

- What is causing the BSODs (according to the tech, he couldn't' find a single issue at all showing up in the files he asked for; he didn't look at, nor want the memory dump files though, only the various setup logs)?

- What is the difference between the ACPIx86 HAL and basic ACPI HAL (other than the x86 one supports more than one processor)?

- What functionality is lost if I don't install a SM Bus driver at all?

- How does the SM Bus driver function (there are no actual drivers files that install with the nVidia driver and there is just the .inf file with only a single entry being changed in the registry; no information was available on the Microsoft version of the driver at all)?

In the end the tech decided I should not install an SM Bus driver at all (even though he couldn't explain how this would affect my system; other than he explained it is somehow involved with controlling power states of some hardware).  After the Windows update for it was manually disabled (hidden), I continued with the other Microsoft updates one by one and then further system configuration.  Because of the previous level of system instability, the tech wanted me to install or enable each piece of hardware one at a time and then install drivers to see if it remained stable.  Annoyingly most of the hardware installs requires 2 reboots.  One for me to shut down and enable it and a second after the driver installs; followed by the next shut down for the next device, etc.

After another ~5 hours I now have everything except the SM Bus driver, the audio driver, the parallel port driver, and the firewire driver installed.  At something like 3 AM I shut it down (actually booted into the 100% stable MCE2005) and went to the cottage for the long weekend (I picked up a new boat and "had" to try it out and get some water-skiing in).  To be honest, after working on Vista most of the day I was so sick and tired of it at that point I decided "forget it - I'll pick up a hardware ExpressVu HD-PVR, a hardware HD/Blu-ray player and a Fury HD to replace it".

Thinking about it now, its been up and running for over an hour (plus the 5 hours of hardware installs) and there hasn't been a single BSOD with this install yet.  Since it seems to be up and running stable (without the SM Bus driver and with the basic ACPI HAL) I'll probably get back at it some time tomorrow and hopefully finish it off.  If Vista starts to BSOD again, I don't know what I'll actually do but I'm definitely going to give up on installing Vista very soon.

BTW, Retty, here are a number of other guys/gals with our same motherboard who were also experiencing the first boot BSODs.  At least one of them figured out theirs BSODs after the SM Bus driver (nVidia PCI driver) is installed and not installing it makes theirs more stable too:

http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/cant-complete-vista-installationblue-screen-in-last-step-vt69024.html

With this Vista install I have not installed the nVidia memory driver.  With my first semi-successful Vista install I originally ran the default ACPIx86 HAL and found using the XP nVidia memory driver seemed to make it more stable.  This time I'm running the default Microsoft memory driver (but as mentioned above, no SM Bus driver at all and the basic ACPI HAL).

Retty:

It's just a thought but is there any way that you could try swapping your memory sticks for memory borrowed from somewhere else? Could it be a memory problem that is not showing itself under XP but is showing itself under Vista?

I have two other PCs that use the same memory and I borrowed and tried several different memory sticks during the various installs as well as tried different numbers of sticks.  Memory doesn't seem to make any difference at all.  I also ran both the Vista memory tester and Memtest x86 3.2 several times and for many, many hours (over the past few months) and all of the memory tests come back without any issues at all.  The very final install was with 1.5 GB installed (3x 512MB).

Retty:

I think the install DVDs are, at present, all the same in terms of driver versions.

According to the Microsoft tech I was working with, you are correct.  I specifically asked him to look into this since I've heard of so many people with very similar motherboards to mine working at least so-so with Vista (most are somewhat unstable, but most will at least get through the Vista install).  He told me that there is one and only one version of the Vista DVD so everyone installing Vista is starting off with exactly the same executables and same drivers.

Retty:

I notice changes every day in the relationship between motherboard and OS. For example initially Everest Home Edition (the free edition) was able to return motherboard sensor information from Vista (CPU temperature and so on). The sensor information is, as of 2 days ago, no longer available from within Vista although it still works fine from XP. No explanation and no error message - just a blank screen where sensor information should be. But it did work initially.

Doesn't sound good.  I didn't want to risk installing any motherboard hardware monitoring utilities so I left my Vista install basic.  My month long run with the last Vista install was pretty consistent as far as functionality though.  The only thing that was totally random was the occurrence of the BSODs.

Retty:

I know that there are issues which can present themselves following an apparently successful install of Vista which, days later and without any tinkering with drivers, can render the system unstable.

Considering the probably 100's of OS installs I've performed over the years (I looked after all of the computers in the engineering department where I worked for about 6 years - 20 years ago; and have been building a few systems per year ever since) I would have to say Vista, with my hardware at least, is by far, the most frustrating and easy to corrupt OS that I have ever installed.

Retty:

As an absolute last resort - and I don't know if you can justify throwing yet more money after this problem - the option (if MS isn't willing or able to activate your functional install) may be to buy an oem license. I was severely ripped off on eBay in this regard but it is possible to buy an oem license at a fairly reasonable price elsewhere.

As I mentioned a few posts before, the 2nd Microsoft tech involved with my case suggested I purchase an additional full license so I could activate what I already had up and running.  To me that's not acceptable.  Why should we give Microsoft more money when according to the Vista upgrade advisor, Vista is supposed to upgrade fine on our systems - yet it doesn't.  I was pleased when the 3rd tech said we shouldn't worry about activation, it wouldn't be a problem, and our effort should be to get Vista running, even if it takes a clean install (it hasn't happened yet, but the Vista install isn't complete either).

A last resort (that I should have already done 10x over), if I'm willing, will be to put my money into hardware and replace the motherboard.  If I could have done just the motherboard without being forced to replace so many other components I would have.  The problem here is other than the hard drives, PSU, TV tuner, and the case, I would have to replace just about everything (even the RAM, the X1950Pro video card, audio, etc.).  I've looked at several options and to get what I think makes the most sense would cost about $1000.  Also, I really want to wait until HD-DVD playback, DTS connect and Dolby Digital Live is fully sorted out for Vista using an Intel motherboard (possibly Intel video if they can provide GPUs that handle HD VC-1 and h.264 decoding).  I don't want to get caught with bleeding edge hardware that somehow doesn't support what we want again and this time I intend to purchase hardware that will be supported for a long time in the future (no more nVidia).

I'm sorry to hear that the problems continue. It seems as if you have ruled almost every hardware component out - I admire your fortitude!

I did suspect from my own experience that the problems may be caused by a driver issue - I experienced problems not just when trying to install the 5.1 sound drivers but also when trying to manually install the SMBus driver (before I installed the sound driver). No bsod but freezes and eventually, following installation of the 5.1 drivers, a corrupted file system that render a new installation necessary - I replicated it a few times.

It's good to know that MS Support will activate your Vista install without you needing to buy a full or oem license. It is a bit disappointing that MS Support wasn't interested in the memory dump files - what's the point of them if they can't be utilised in troubleshooting a problem like yours?!

The link you provided is interesting because, as you say, it seems that other people have exactly the same problem. Some people - myself included - haven't seen the bsod problem on installation or afterwards even after installing the SMBus driver from Windows Update. I wonder if different versions of A7N8X (or different bios versions) behave differently.

But I agree with you: no way will I buy nVidia in the future. nVidia's dropping of nforce2 and later versions of nforce is disgraceful in the context of reasonable expectations about hardware life.

But I hope you manage to resolve the problem at least in terms of establishing a relatively stable system (whatever that means). I am certain - at least of my experience - that the 5.1 drivers can cause major problems under Vista. To be honest I don't miss 5.1 in Vista because I can always use XP on the dual boot system (which does however kind of defeat the purpose of upgrading in the first place).

Btw, I've notice that I do occasionally experience problems when trying to wake the PC up out of Vista sleep mode - it freezes necessitating PC reset but there seems to be little pattern to it. I'm not surprised by what you say about the SMBus file - it did cross my mind that it contained very little other than perhaps a registry entry to suppress the device manager exclamation.

I haven't found the time to finish off the Vista install and I'll be out of town for the next few weeks.

Hopefully Microsoft won't have closed the case by the time I get back to fighting with Vista (I did send an e-mail to the tech stating when I'll be back and asking him to keep the case open).

I don't know if you're still reading this but if you are still trying I would be interested to know how you are getting on.

I've found a very annoying problem with the A7N8X, Vista and a Netgear USB wireless adapter which I can't solve. The Netgear adapter works well until I plug in or use another USB device - be it memory stick, PDA or printer. The adapter disconnects and will not reconnect unless it is manually unplugged and plugged in again. The adapter works well with XP and it seems that other (non A7N8X) users don't have the problem with Vista. I haven't been able to test the problem on another Vista A7N8X PC to see whether or not it exists.

I really don't know whether or not to throw yet more money after this set up and buy a PCI wireless card. I've spent too much already though and the money could have gone towards a new PC :-(

I think there are USB controller issues with A7N8X and Vista - perhaps not helped by poorly written drivers but I suspect not completely caused by them. Reading previous posts in this thread I can see that the main theme seems to be problems controlling various motherboard hardware of motherboard functions.

I am impressed though with how well the AMD processor continues to perform - it still has some life left in it yet and is even able to handle heavy work transcoding of file for playing back on a Xbox 360.  

I guess I should have posted an update earlier, but we are no longer "trying to get Vista running".  Vista is now up and running stable (mostly) on our A7N8X-E Deluxe based HTPC.

The main action that I believe fixed the BSODs and overall system instability was Microsoft's release of two hardware and software compatibility patches in August through Windows Update.

Prior to these patches and after a lot of experimenting (working with Microsoft's Tech Support), we discovered that the system was functional and stable if we did a fresh install of Vista and specifically did not install any updates, patches or additional drivers during the installation and then prior to running Windows Update I manually changed the HAL from ACPIx86 to ACPI.  If I did run Windows Update or even just left the system up for a while, it would start to BSOD over and over and eventually corrupt everything (and I would have to start over with a fresh install again).

Once the ACPI HAL was running, we then found we had to disable the Windows Update for the SM Bus driver.  Again, if this was allowed to install it would BSOD over and over and I would end up starting over with a fresh install (I wanted a complete Vista installation without a single BSOD).  Although Tech Support wanted us to use the computer "for now" without an SM Bus driver, we found various pieces of hardware wouldn't function properly without one.

Instead of installing the Windows Update SM Bus driver, the SM Bus driver included with nVidia's nForce3 AMD motherboard driver pack also supports the A7N8X-E Deluxe motherboard (and all nForce2 MBs).  Extracting this driver from the driver pack using WinRAR and installing it allowed all of the hardware to work properly.  Without it, some hardware, including the TV Tuner (Hauppauge PVR-250) and Microsoft's Media Center remote would not function correctly (Media Center could not configure the TV Tuner and couldn't operate the IR Blaster).

Once all of the above was done, the system was very stable (no BSODs at all) and functional, except there were many IRQs being shared between hardware.

After a while we started to see recording failures.  At the time I suspected the shared IRQs could be causing the trouble.  In reality it was corruption of the Recordings.xml file, likely caused by a bug in Media Center's scheduler somewhere.  I don't know what specifically causes the scheduler to get confused, but it has happened again recently.  The solution at the moment is to delete the Recordings.xml file and reconfigure all recordings again.  Hopefully Microsoft will take care of this issue in a future patch.

Anyway, due to the suspected IRQ conflict causing issues, I decided to allow the OS to re-detect the HAL.  Microsoft's Tech Support also sent me an email stating that these patches might fix some of our issues and I should let him know.  Luckily it turns out that the August hardware and software compatibility patches did fix the system instability with the full ACPIx86 HAL.  Once up and running with it, the system remained stable plus was now able to provide independent IRQs for the hardware (including the PVR-250).

Although Microsoft is aware of what worked and what didn't work (BSODs) with my hardware and many others with similar hardware I don't know if it is properly resolved yet (the tech support issue was actually grouped with many other customers with the same issue and all of us were sending in error logs, etc. as Microsoft's "Research Department" documented the issues).  By that I mean I don't know if a simple install of Vista, followed by an automatic Windows Update would work or if it still leads to BSODs with certain hardware.

Right now, although the OS is stable, we are still having issues with drivers for the video card (no DXVA) as well as dealing with the recording issue mentioned above (corruption of the recording schedule).  (One thing I should note WRT corruption of the recording schedule - the recording schedule (Recordings.xml) we were having issues with had been migrated from MCE2005.  I have no idea what caused things to go wrong, but it may be specific to our specific set of scheduled recordings, migration from MCE2005, specific guide data, etc.  It might be safest not to migrate an MCE2005 Recordings.xml file to Vista.)

My best guess is both of these areas will be resolved through future video drivers and future Windows Update patches. 

I did receive an e-mail from our Microsoft Tech Support contact about a week ago.  In the e-mail he said although our system appears stable that there are additional patches included in Vista SP1, that will properly address the stability issues we were having.  He said, until SP1, there will still be some residual system stability issues with this motherboard and Vista and as such he is closing all of our cases as "unresolved" pending SP1.  I was told to reopen it if we have further issues after SP1.  I'm not sure what specific residual issues he means, but it looks like things should get even better after SP1.  Right now the biggest issue we are having, as already mentioned, is corruption of the recording schedule.  We do also see the occasional lock up of Media Center as well as a rare system lockup while browsing the web (since reverting back to ACPIx86).  I suspect the Media Center lock ups are unrelated to SP1, but the web browsing lock ups could be.

As far as your specific issues, we too had USB problems.  In our case, if we attempted to use our 500GB USB hard drive, Vista would become unstable and BSOD as well as corrupt the USB drive.  Because of this, I have never attempted to use the USB drive when booted into Vista (with this installation).  Its possible the issue still remains, but it may not (I don't want to start our system BSOD'ing again so I don't really want to try it yet).

Probably your best bet, if you have time, is to wait until SP1 comes out.  Hopefully, as the tech said, it will properly address the issues with our hardware and Vista.

As far as system performance, I too am very impressed with how well our AMD Athlon XP 3200+ is able to run Vista.  There is definitely plenty of CPU power for Vista, once the remaining software glitches get resolved.  The one area where Vista is currently failing badly for computational ability is HD video playback.  Our "Vista Certified" ATI X1950Pro 512MB AGP video card will play any video game with smooth seamless video at 1920x1080 in Vista, but so far, not a single bit of HD video will play back since ATI doesn't have DXVA working yet with our hardware and Vista (we still have to dual boot into MCE2005 to watch HD content).

Thanks again for a really informative post.

I reaslise now that I possibly avoided the BSOD problem by disabling Windows update during installation (disconnecting internet access) although I didn't need to alter the HAL settings.

I've also used the Windows Update provided SM Bus driver without any obvious problem. When I did try to use nForce3 drivers I started to experience file corruption problems which made the system almost unusable - I had to use XP chkdsk to fix the repeated problems. I actually caught chkdsk running a few days ago - the first file corruption problem I've seen for a number of weeks. It's odd that you seem to have found a partial solution in the very thing that caused my system to become unusable. Are you using the nForce3 sound drivers?

I wonder if the problem you are having with corruption of the recording schedule is similar to my file corruption problem? It sounds very specific but is it possible that specific memory or other operations are causing problems with Vista and A7N8X? It's of course possible, as you say, that the file migration caused problems.

Maybe specific hardware configurations make the problems, which are not so apparent on some A7N8X systems, appear.

One thing I'm certain of is that I can't keep my netgear USB adapter connected if I use another USB device. It's a major annoyance with no obvious solution. I may be tempted to try the nForce3 drivers again but, given the world of pain last time, I may not!

I hope that these problems are fixed with SP1 although I am not optimistic. I'm still disappointed that the Asus hasn't provided updated drivers for nForce2 and although I accept that technological change moves on with relentless pace it's frustrating to see that the A7N8X (which was still available at retail in late 2003/early 2005) and AMD processor can still handle everything I need from it.

Thanks again.

The issues with the A7N8X-E Deluxe seem to be significantly different between hardware versions and BIOS versions (I suspect it really all comes down to the BIOS).

If you're running an older revision motherboard with BIOS version 1008, it seems that the windows SM Bus driver works well.

If you're running the latest revision motherboard with BIOS version 1013 (like I am), it seems that the nForce3 SM Bus driver works well.

I suspect the issue might lie within the ACPI's Differentiated System Description Table (DSDT).  There were changes made to it between BIOS releases and Vista treats these tables differently than XP did (likely it uses more of the information and this highlights more issues than XP did).  The different HALs make use of this ACPI information differently too.

I went through the trouble of extracting my DSDT and going through it (it contains an enormous amount of information...).  I also had a look at BIOS rev. 1008's DSDT.  Using Intel's DSDT compiler (which is known to be more strict), the DSDT from 1013 compiles without errors, while the DSDT from 1008 contains errors.  That's about as far as I got since when I tried the ACPI HAL it stopped BSODing.

I too wondered if the Recordings.xml corruption could be due to memory errors.  Although not foolproof, in addition to not seeing any errors when thoroughly testing the memory (tested again recently too) using both Vista's memory tests (extended tests too) and Memtest 3.2, I have also installed and run Prime95 for more than 50 hours using the large FFT torture test.  It never saw any errors either (nor did it ever BSOD or crash while running Prime95).  Admittedly, I haven't actually run Prime95 in Vista for well over a month now and there have been some Windows Updates installed, so its remotely possible there could be new issues.  I guess I'll try it again.

The only time I've seen hard drive errors was when I tried to uninstall Catalyst 7.8.  Luckily they cleaned up (eventually) and I didn't have to reinstall (yet).

Its too bad there aren't any built in Vista memory tests that can run while the OS is up and running to test it under full load.

I don't know what to suggest for an immediate fix for your USB issues.  I suppose you could always try picking up an inexpensive PCI USB card.  There are lots of them in the $10+ range.  Just as an example http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=511.

I just did a quick USB hotfix search for Vista and there are quite a few patches available for USB issues that will, most likely, be included in SP1.  You can download and apply these individually if you want (after reading through them to see if their applicable):

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933262

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/939331

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927546

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930568

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930570

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925528

Good luck.

Actually, here is an even more inclusive hotfix you might want to look at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936003

BTW, Prime95 has been running a balanced torture test for about 7 hours so far.  It is configured to use 1.2GB of memory and other than the system being a little sluggish (sometimes thrashing the hard drive a lot using virtual memory) and the fans making a lot of noise, its both running stable and passing all of the numerical/memory tests.  Media Center has been up and running almost the whole time, both recording and playing back video.

Another thing I'm impressed with is I tried out S3 suspend (fans off) and away mode yesterday and both work flawlessly.  I never could get S3 to work in MCE2005 and was expecting Vista to have issue resuming from S3 also.

I have to say Microsoft has been doing an impressive job getting the fundamental OS issues with Vista and this "old" hardware sorted out.  A few months ago I had my doubts.  If only ATI could get their drivers to provide DXVA in Vista, this system would provide everything we wanted for our dedicated home theater Media Center (well, except for HD recordings off ExpressVu Satellite and no more corrupt Recordings.xml files...).

Thanks again :-)

I may well give the hotfixes a try but I think you are probably correct when you say that different Bios versions are having an impact on the stability of A7N8X under Vista. I thought it was significant, following a link you provided in an earlier post, that a number of people have been having the BSOD problem but that I (and it seems at least some other other people using earlier versions of the board and earlier Bios versions) weren't. I've considered upgrading the Bios to a later version (the latest version my version board will support is I think 1009) but I think I'll leave alone and accept what I have for now.

I played a more than passable game of Halo 2 last week (albeit having borrowed a friend's no longer used X800 XT card rather than my Radeon 9500). The board and processor does everything I need it to and having the money I have in recent months I think I need to stick with it for a while longer at least.

I'm glad that you've managed to solve the most significant part of your problems. I suspect that DXVA support for Vista can't be that far off (surely) although the problem with the corrupt recordings file is a bit more perplexing. 7 hours of torture test does suggest that the memory isn't to blame though! I don't think that my fan and heatsink would manage anywhere near that! I am impressed that the S3 suspend mode (fans off) worked well. I think MS has done a good job in addressing at least the most serious issues with Vista and the old hardware. I hope they don't stop here though.

Retty:

7 hours of torture test does suggest that the memory isn't to blame though! I don't think that my fan and heatsink would manage anywhere near that!

I stopped the torture test after almost 24 hours with 100% CPU utilization and almost 100% memory use (typically 93-97% according to task manager) and it was still running strong without a single failed calculation.  Media Center also recorded several shows in that time and DVRMSToolbox, using Show Analyser, also processed all of them so we don't have to watch the commercials.

Why don't you try Prime95 on yours and see?  As far as I'm concerned, all computers should be able to run at 100% continuously without messing up.

There is one thing I discovered that disappointed me.  I've recently installed a few games on the Vista partition.  Until today, everything I tried played extremely well and nothing crashed (although I noticed Vista seems to use up a pile of extra memory - something to do with the way it makes a copy of video memory - 512MB in my case).  I downloaded a demo for the new Colin McRae rally game "Dirt".  It wouldn't run at all and after a little research I discovered it requires a processor that supports SSE2.  The Athlon XP 3200+ does not.  I tried it on my Athlon 64 based system, but the nVidia 6800 video card couldn't do the game justice (the X1950Pro in the HTPC blows the doors off the 6800 for gaming).

I guess, even if the HTPC ends up working flawlessly for Media Center, it still will need an upgrade if I want to be able to play the latest rally simulation games in the "theater" room (just like watching movies, playing high end video games on the 51" HDTV with the Dolby 5.1 audio digitally passed to the Yamaha receiver, complete with the 1200W (peak) SVS subwoofer is quite an experience).

My elation about my system being absolutely rock solid stable while running Vista may have been a little premature...

Tonight, after we watched some TV, I decided to look into and properly configure away mode.  While I was running the powercfg queries (no changes yet), all of a sudden the system BSOD'd.

After rebooting, I checked the event logs and discovered that early on during the Prime95 thrashing (using all physical memory and CPU), it started writing strange entries in the system log.  There are literally almost 20,000 of the following warning messages in it (and they were continuously being written even after Prime95 was closed):

"The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur."

The event ID is 57 and it was generated by volsnap.

Searching the web, I couldn't find a good explanation, but it seems it might be related to being unable to properly write memory pages to the hard drive during the creation of a system restore point (why is it so difficult to figure out what errors in the system logs actually mean!!).  The only thing I could find that could remotely be a specific cause of this was in ATI's knowledge base ID 737-986 (this article was updated on 7/27/2007).

This article was for XP, but it states the cause is running out of system page table entries and the work around is to manually force the maximum number to be allocated.  I noticed that the registry entry that controls this has already been altered by ATI during the video driver installation.

Anyway, after a reboot, and a chkdsk, everything seems OK.  Obviously something isn't quite right with Vista or ?? yet and it can't handle being pushed beyond it's physical memory limits.  My work around is going to be to not use all of the physical memory up in the future...

Maybe torture testing your system with Prime95 isn't the best idea, unless you want to risk corrupting it...

The plot thickens.

I installed one of the hotfixes yesterday and it didn't cure the problem. It did however result in the system suffering a blue screen on shutdown. It's hard to say what caused it though because I did run Prime95 for a short while before shutting down. I didn't need to run chkdsk.

Best to be cautious!