What causes Vista lockups?

Hardware vendor always provide superior drivers over system builders.
 
It could also be your memory. Maybe there isn't enough, or it's bad.
 
I actually have swapped out the memory, and ran tests on both. But came up clean - different slots and all sorts of other stuff.

Didn't have a chance to mess with drivers last night, will do so and report back.
 
Was pretty much towards the ends of my wits with this, thinking about calling MS tomorrow to open a support incident since I have a few free ones they owe me.

Conveniently enough, I came across this nifty little tool -

http://www.bitsum.com/prolasso.php

Actually defines the issue my machines are having perfectly. Going to run this without worry since it's free, and see what comes up.
 
I have noticed this happening to me at times when the computer is trying to start a process, like the external drive for example. It will freeze up until it starts running. And also when I let the pc sit for a little while. The way I found to solve it is to run a screen saver.

Something else I noticed was that at time my antivirus is checking something, in which will cause it to freeze up as well. So that could be an issue with you also.
 
Are you sure your hard drive is not going into sleep mode or powering down?

In the power management profile go into advanced or something then check the setting of all the drop down boxes. Somewhere in there I remember seeing about time to power down hard disk. Not on Vista right now so can not be precise about where to check this.
 
I use a screen saver - but from my experience this has only happened when I'm sitting at the computer TRYING to get stuff done when it locks up. I did check my power settings, and nothing shuts down, ever. Not that I would expect it to when using it, but I checked it anyway.

I don't recall it ever occuring when idle, i.e. when I left it for a bit and came back to it. Also, I don't use A/V (but I have done scans to be sure that's not the case). To further that point, it happens on my laptop too, which does have A/V.

Just loaded Process Lasso a few minutes ago. Nifty tool, will see if it comes up with anything. I'm overly disappointed there isn't some other way to try and find out what's going on natively within Vista, but from what I have read Windows 7 is taking diagnostics to a new level. Will have to see what that really means.

Theoretically this tool should prevent my problem from ever happening again, as well as pointing out the problem. Here is to hoping it works as advertised :up:
 
you know this is just a long shot, but, I am wondering if maybe it could be something checking for updates, like windows itself. It might be something like that causing it to spike the processor.
 
Not an impossibility - but if that was the case with Windows at least, I would think that would be a bug. In previous versions of Windows, the AU client was very lightweight and I haven't read anything about that with regards to Vista. I'd think it wouldn't only be me having the issue.

I don't have much else running - none of my applications check for updates on their own. I have full control (queue evil laugh music).

Either way, I'm excited/interested to hopefully resolve this issue that has been a real pain in the ass for months. The software will actually give balloon tips and keeps a log on anything that occurs, so I may leave it on for a few weeks to see if I can get it to occur and caputure the culprit.
 
Yeah, when you find out let me know. This has me quite intrigued.
 
last time i had vista issues the memory and the board were incompatible
 
I would hope that's not the case since I have a Dell, and the RAM is straight from the factory. I have ran memtest as well as Dell hardware diagnostics - all passed with flying colors.

Could also be a possibility though.
 
So far, so good. Although admittedly this had gone away on its own in the past only to rear its ugly head later on. I just had my first run-in with Process Lasso. Just doing my thing, and I got a balloon tip that svchost.exe was getting out of control, and Process Lasso promptly smacked it down.

On the way out the door atm, but at quick glance the log itself for the application is not easily accessible through the UI. I can view a quick glance which gives me date/time info and what happened, but I'm hoping there might be further diagnostic information in a log file on my drive somewhere, which from what I remember is in the user profile some place.
 
Very unlikely. I don't OC at all - and that wouldn't be explained by simply powering down and then back up again. By this I would have to hold in the power button until it shuts off, then turn back on immediately. IMO, not enough time for the system to cool off if it was locking up for an overheating event.
 

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Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
Any of the SP crew still out there?
Xie wrote on Electronic Punk's profile.
Impressed you have kept this alive this long EP! So many sites have come and gone. :(

Just did some crude math and I apparently joined almost 18yrs ago, how is that possible???
hello peeps... is been some time since i last came here.
Electronic Punk wrote on Sazar's profile.
Rest in peace my friend, been trying to find you and finally did in the worst way imaginable.

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