I'm at my wits end. Vista keeps freezing and acting weird. Could anyone help?

Question

I've had this problem with both Windows Vista and 7. My system is a top-of-the range one and very powerful, but for some unknown reason neither Vista nor 7 will run smoothly. I'll give you some specifics of my system's behaviour:

When install a clean copy of Vista, at first there are no problems. Once I install one or two programs, the problem manifests itself. Vista gets unstable and keeps freezing. I can move the mouse pointer, but everything else freezes for 30 seconds or so and if I try to click on anything, for example on the title bar of an open window or a program or right click, it becomes non-responsive and no matter how many times I press Ctrl+Alt+Delete, task manages doesn't start. I have to leave it for a minute untll it starts working again. The problem with Windows Update is quite severe too. It doesn't seem to work the way it should. I installed Vista yesterday and tried to download some updates, but it froze in the middle of it and Vista got even more unstable. I've installed Vista 3 times since yesterday hoping it would work well. I even check for registery errors, but nothing seems to be of any help. The other time I could run Vista for longer periods of time, it ran without problems by chance, so now I'm constatly uninstalling and reinstalling it hoping that I get a chance and it runs with no problems. So far, no good results. Oh and it takes Windows Update 20 minutes to download 5 MBs. This is a new type of problem I've been running into since yesterday. 3 times of clean installation and the same problems persist.

I posted this question with great difficulty, because even Wordpad kept freezing!

I'm using Vista Ultimate Edition 64X.

Could anyone help?

Answer 1

Bad RAM



The other thing it could be, that just occurred to me, is a bad cooling fan. Is it overheating? I don't

think you mentioned it be a laptop, but they are notorious for overheating when paired with a dedicated graphics card -vs- an on-board chip. Test it by using compressed (canned air) and manually cooling your exhaust port (a little at a time) If your system stays stable as long as you are cooling it, then it's a bad cpu fan.

Answer 2

Windows released vista, and later found out that it had many bugs in it. Customers were angry that things were wrong, so windows fixed all the bugs and re-released it and called it windows 7. That's why vista and 7 are so similar, and were released a short time from each other.

Answer 3

This sounds like bad RAM or some other hardware issue. There's a free program called memtest 86+. Download it, burn it to CD and then boot off that CD and run the program. It'll test your RAM, which is the most likely culprit. If it fails, start pulling out sticks of RAM and test each one to find which is bad.

Answer 4

Yes it sounds like bad ram! It could be the mother board too!! Re-seat the ram or even replace it as this is a cost effective simple step that could be the issue!