Vista boot failure - Dual boot situation

[Old Pilot]

Hi Gentlemen,

I hope that you can help. I have built a new system to game with and have 2
new hard drives, on one I put XP Pro and then on the other I loaded Vista.

I have more or less completed all the driver upgrades and windows updates
but I keep getting repeated boot failures of Vista. I can always get into
Safe mode but in Normal mode the boot fails just after the first spash screen
at the point when the screen goes blank to be replaced by the small circular
Vista logo. After 2 or 3 attempts it succeeds to load but then the problem
seems to reoccur, particularly when I have been back to XP for a while.

I had a similar problem with XP but that seems to have sorted itself out.

I have tired looking in the logs for faults and failures but no clues there.

I am running an ASUS P5E MB with Intel Quad 6600, 4Gig RAM, GeForce 8800GT
and 2x250Gig HDs.

Thanks.

 

[TooManyBytes]

Hello

I have the same problem with a quad core cpu, too (Q6700, 8 gig ram.) After
months attempting to get my machine running, I simply gave up and put
openSUSE on instead.

Vista would run in safe mode or in a virtual pc, but not by itself.

This OS is just so far away from being ready I can't believe it was
released.

Anyway, the openSUSE runs like a champion, and I am close to getting rid of
everything MS.

But I am curious, if you get an answer would you let me know?

 

[Old Pilot]

Wilco TooManyBytes,

I am begining to think it is a number of problems and now top of my list is
the ASUS P5E motherboard. The ASUS utility (ATK 0110 ACPI utility) seems to
have a growing reputation for causing blue screen failures and there is no
cure at the moment.

If I find anything else out I'll post it.

OP

 

[John Barnes]

Since you get into Safe mode and not Normal mode, the odds are you have a
driver problem. Especially make sure you have the latest video driver for
you card.

 

[Old Pilot]

Thank you John,

Yes the MB and video drivers were my first port of call, along with Vista
updates and I have the very latest. I am running the GeForce 8800GT Super+
which has 1 Gig of video memory but doesn't have a specifc driver and uses
the generic 8800. Novatech assure me that the 8 series of drivers are
correct and should work fine.

Nick

 

[RalfG]

Have you got a hefty enough power supply to support that video card? IIRC
that series requires over 400 watts in a single card configuration. A
marginal PS can cause video card failures as the power load changes while
booting or when going into 3D modes. Safe mode is a lower power state than
normal boot with only basic video functions enabled.

 

[TooManyBytes]

Well, we share some stuff:

SATA
NVIDIA
Quad Core CPU (2.66)
More than a little RAM
My MB is an Infinity, not overclocked ... yet
I built the machine to be a burner, power supply is, well, big.
All of the drivers, including BIOS and Chipset were upgraded.

Aside from the fact that I feel ripped off after paying $234 for this
useless OS, I guess I am more than a little unhappy.

I wound up having that machine a dual boot; XP and openSUSE, and it seems to
be working great. I use the DVD to repair my notebook, VISTA keeps breaking
it, too.

Sigh,

 

[John Barnes]

nVidia doesn't make card specific drivers. Which driver have you installed?
Have you tried the beta driver?