Vista Fried the Hardware

[Guest]

Yes, Vista DEFINATELY fried out my video card. I am a student of Engineering
Science with an Electrical and Computer focus. I know my hardware. If anyone
wants the technical report on how I came to this conclusion, feel free to
request it as a reply to this post.

My suggestion to Microsoft is to come up with a customer satisfaction plan
now. A Google search of, "Vista broke fried video card." shows that this is a
fairly new, (other than the early days of longhorn) and quickly developing
issue. If I were a large corporation and not a home user, I would assume law
suits would be expectable, although someone is always trying to sue
Microsoft. Well, at a minimum, this can be taken as a heads up. Not a heads
up that I'm going to sue. I don't care enough, and I don't like the whole sue
over everything attitude. I'm saying the next guy might be waiting for an
excuse to call Uncle Bob the family Lawyer, and this could be a good one.
Yet, I am digressing.

My specialty is electronics, not business, so this might not be the most
cost effective route, and this isn't an expert opinion. Personally, I would
recommend getting a second contract with the outsourced manufacturer of the
Xbox video card, NVIDIA, and give "complementary" GeForce 8800 Ultra sets to
end users who can be validated to have graphics card hardware failure related
to the installation of Vista. Compared to the cost of dealing with Joe
American Businesses’ theoretical law suit, I don't know what the difference
would be, or the cost to MS for time spent on customer service and technical
support. It might be worth looking into and developing a statistical data
sheet.

Additionally, a complementary upgrade would greatly increase user
satisfaction because a frustrating, unexpected, and newly detected issue
would have the end result of leaving the customer with better performance
than they had before. It would reinforce the sense of trust and loyalty in
the Microsoft brand name, in addition to word of mouth advertising in a
positive light. "Vista stinks. It fried my video card. Don't install it
because it can break your computer's hardware" compared to "When I first
installed Vista it fried my graphics card, so they sent me a new one, top of
the line! Now my experience index is 4.7, you should come over and check it
out!" Cost of "complementary" graphics cards compared to advertising costs
can be another factor of the data sheets.

Although this tactic could be seen as Windows admiting to Vista's failure,
my experience has showed me that the majority respects when people own up to
their mistakes and take pro-active steps to correct the error. For example,
the public was much more upset that former President Clinton had lied under
oath and the act to cover it up than they were about the deed itself. For
Microsoft, to deny responsibility that Vista can cause certain hardware to
become corrupt, well I'm only a student, and I figured it out, it's only a
matter of time before a much more creditable source provides evidence, so
this is an issue that will need to be addressed sooner or later. Deny it, and
be proven wrong, and loose more public trust; create a plan to address it
when it comes up and divert the attention of Vista's weak point to "Cool, I
scored a free upgrade for having a dumpy computer!"

The DRM and other license procedures sometimes make me feel like I have paid
to borrow something under supervision, and that my electronics are not "mine"
as they would be if it were a book or painting. Now hardware issues resulting
from no fault of my own, yet I have to pay for, makes me feel even more like
I have no control over my equipment, which is a feeling I would assume no
business wants to create in their customers.

With the money it cost for the software, additional licenses, RAM upgrade,
and now I need to buy a "gaming" graphics card, I am feeling a bit like I'm
the milked cash cow. I know for myself, if Microsoft stepped up and had my
computer running better than I could afford to spend, and at an improved
state than under XP, I would think, "Microsoft is a legitimate business that
appreciates me as a customer. They appreciate the home user that has the
adventurousness to switch an entire OS to a unfamiliar an mostly unknown
environment. They are not the evil M$ empire they are sometimes portrayed to
be. It was worth the time and money I put into this upgrade."

As of right now, my opinion stands parallel to the registry of motor
vehicles. Windows, like owning and operating a car, is an expensive and
tedious chore of setup and maintenance, but necessary for trouble free
operation enabling interface with today’s business world. It is up to me to
make sure that everything is done to standard. If the RMV makes a mistake,
it's up to me to catch it, else either I pay the fine, or loose productivity
challenging it in court. Likewise, if Windows development makes a mistake, it
up to me to catch it, else just all around loose productivity and also pay
for repairs. It's something I just have to put up with, no matter how much I
might dislike it. What options to I have? Don't drive my car, or drive
illegally. Don't drive on the internet, or drive on Xinux, with minimal plug
and play and resource hog, or OSX, which I know absolutely NOTHING about. I
wrote my first program in QBASIC when I was 8, and used DOS growing up; over
the course of my childhood I read the DOS book cover to cover. My childhood
friend’s father developed Lotus 123, which is essentially the same as excel
and access. I couldn't ever hope to have as thorough of an understanding of
OSX that I do of DOS, and the GUI of Windows. I have the driving school
graduation certificate for Win32. For me to use OSX is analogous to driving a
motorcycle instead of a car without the Class M license or operator training.

At this point, either the idea is adopted or not. I more than made my point.
For the most part, I guess this is part end user feedback and part rant. I
apologize if I didn't post it in the appropriate place. I hope somewhere it
was useful to someone.

A second suggestion- please add spell check to the forums. Copy/paste into
word or using Firefox is just an extra pain.


----------------
This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the
suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I
Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this
link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then
click "I Agree" in the message pane.

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/co...crosoft.public.windows.vista.hardware_devices

 

[Richard Urban]

You say that Vista fried your video card, yet you give no backup evidence.
Software does not mechanically kill hardware. Software can "logically"
corrupt hardware but the drive is still physically intact.

If the card is designed correctly and has proper cooling, is fed with a
sufficient voltage/current path - I find that highly unlikely.

The card was just defective to begin with. It happens.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Kerry Brown]

I agree with Richard. Show us your proof. I've been repairing electronics
and computers for 25 years. I've yet to see software damage hardware unless
the hardware had a flaw to start with. With video cards it is certainly
possible to damage a monitor and possibly the video card by setting the
wrong refresh rate and possibly resolution. This is possible in other OS' as
well as Windows. It's a design flaw of some video card/monitor combinations.

 

[Conor]

Yes, Vista DEFINATELY fried out my video card.
BWAHAHAHA.

I am a student of Engineering
Science with an Electrical and Computer focus.

You should ask for your money back.

I know my hardware. If anyone
wants the technical report on how I came to this conclusion, feel free to
request it as a reply to this post.

Yeah go on...could do with a laugh.

My specialty is electronics, not business,

No, it's neither.

 

[Conor]

I agree with Richard. Show us your proof. I've been repairing electronics
and computers for 25 years.

But he's a student...your 25 years experience means sod all

 

[Rock]

Yes, Vista DEFINATELY fried out my video card.

<snip>

Yeah right.

If you want to file a bug report or make a suggestion to MS here is how.
Posting in this newsgroup isn't going to do it.

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/contactbug

(e-mail address removed)

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

"If anyone wants the technical report on how I came to this
conclusion, feel free..."
It seems you have been asked a few times.
Go ahead and post your data, or if extensive, give us a link where
this information is available.

 

[Guest]

Okay, "fried" is not the right term. "Corrupted" - satisfied semantics buffs?
Obviously, I am not going to get anywhere with this. I was giving a
suggestion, because I had problems, and I had seen others had experienced the
same thing. I definately did not expect the unprofessionalisim of being
attacked for valididty. I would say the quickest way for the data would be
through customer support ticket #1034393627

The bottom line is that I spent over $500 upgrading my network to Vista, and
my options are to spend more on a new graphics card, or reformat and go back
to XP. Either way I didn't get what I paid for. There were no warnings with
the update advisor, and by default Vista configured the Graphics controller
at too high of a rate for the hardware. I am extremely dissapointed and
frustrated with this. Some of the responces so far just add to the
dissapointment. What a shame that I came with only an idea I came up with off
the top of my head to be riddiculed by professionals that claim affiliation
to a company that prides innovation.

With this type of support the outside forums predicting Vista to become the
next Windows ME flop are probably right.

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

"satisfied semantics buffs"
The semantics is very significant as an engineer knows.
Your first post suggested something was physically wrong with the
video card after Vista "Vista Fried the Hardware"
In reality it seems the drivers are corrupted.
The difference between the two goes beyond semantics since the issue
are totally different.

You left your claim open to question since hardware being fried by
software is almost unheard of and needs something to substantiate the
claim, information you had stated is available in a "technical report
".

The bottom line is corrupted drivers is an easy fix while a fried card
requires replacement since the fried card would be garbage.

--
Jupiter Jones [MVP]
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar
http://www.dts-l.org

 

[Guest]

Yes, you are right semantics can be critical. Now this is the complication-

I have already been through the whole customer service process. I had
desktop sharing with another research engineering tech from MS, and in the
end result my issue was never resolved. I was informed that the graphics card
itself is definately corrupted, (does that make sense?) and that I need to
replace it soon or eventually it could possibly stop working altogether. The
whole situation didn't sound like anything other than a physical error,
caused by a current somewhere where it shouldn't have been, blown cap, diode,
tranny, whichever. Makes sense, I've had that happen enough times, why not?
Dx Diag said DX10, while the card manufacturer said it can run up to 9. Ok,
so I don't know much about the DX programs, but I know some IC's with the
wrong signal in/out to can pop some components, I'll buy it, never heard of
it happening either, not even the worst viruses known can blow hardware, but
this is a new OS, and he's the tech, he deals with this all day every day. I
was told that it's possible that if I go back to XP the problem might
subside, but it would still be a good idea to get a new card anyways. This
makes it sound more like a driver corruption issue. When I requested
clarification, I was told "It's corrupted, you're going to have to contact
the manufacturer for replacement." Now if it's a corrupted driver, I don't
understand why would I have to physically replace anything? These weren't
issues under XP, the install, and the following driver search process, and
even when the support case was opened. (it orginally was because my WGA key
wouldn't take because the Product ID for some reason said OEM, which it
definately was not.) I asked most of the following personel why this would
happen, and I was told that certain hardware is incompatable and becomes
damaged when attempted to be run under vista. I clearly asked, "Did Vista do
it?" to which was responded, "I think you are right. It's a reasonable
probablility." So it's not a corrupted driver or why would I need to replace
the M'board (it's an intergrated chip set.) It's a "fried" card although the
term used was corrupted. If it were an exsisting defect from the maker of the
card, maybe whichever pin the problem was on wasn't used on XP? The tech
report I sent to the service rep is on the desktop of the bad computer which
I'm not on right now, but I see your point. I'll get it on here early next
week.


Right now, I don't care anymore. It was fine, I upgraded to Vista, and I
need to buy a new graphics card, out of pocket, the manf. warranty is void
even though the system is maybe 5 months old. It's had one problem after
another since I installed it.

So fried fits the activity. Corrupted fits the words used, and logic. All I
really care about is that it's not working. I think I've paid enough money
already and still have no results. As I said, I grew up with MS, so I have
some sort of twisted loyalty to it. I don't know what goes on inside
Microsoft. I know a few other people that if they were in the same position
would make the biggest dramatic scene they possibly could. I was trying to
help out by saying that it would shut me up, make me feel better, and most of
them as well. The way it sounded to me was the graphics card I had was never
tested with Vista, and that Vista uses it differently than XP and used a
different program to determine the channels, it was just the wrong stuff to
send to this chip, ground the enable, whatever. I thought, you know, that
would kind of be a big deal if I had more at stake, it probably should be
looked into, or at least listed somewhere as incompatable. If it's too late,
come up with a coping plan. This plan would work for me, probably would for
others.

I was intending to be helpful, not turned into the way to get on the
better-than-you box because using cute little ways to belittle and trash what
I said and miss the whole point all together. The funniest thing is that it
was MS, not me, who have made the final determination. I was offered a refund
if I choose to go back to XP, but I don't want to go to XP, I've already
reinstalled all my old programs and cofigured Vista. I really don't have the
time to do it all over again. That's not an answer. I asked why they
couldn't just send a graphics card, and they said because Microsoft doesn't
make graphics cards, so there isn't one to send. Well, duh, I guess that was
a dumb question. So if MS is willing to lose the $220 as a refund, I would
rather keep vista and use half that cost on a better card. You know, I'm
done. Why am I even sitting here still attempting to rationally explain
myself in a serious way to people that obviously just aren't interested. What
a waste of time! Just an example of why good guys finish last.

 

[Guest]

How did I come across as Know it All, undermining anyone elses knowledge?
Obviously you know more about it than I do. That wasn't my point.

 

[Guest]

Oh, just for the record, "he's" a she.

But he's a student...your 25 years experience means sod all




--
Conor

Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright
until you hear them speak.........

 

[DevilsPGD]

In message <[email protected]> KayRab

Right now, I don't care anymore. It was fine, I upgraded to Vista, and I
need to buy a new graphics card, out of pocket, the manf. warranty is void
even though the system is maybe 5 months old. It's had one problem after
another since I installed it.

And why exactly is the warranty void?

The way it sounded to me was the graphics card I had was never
tested with Vista, and that Vista uses it differently than XP and used a
different program to determine the channels, it was just the wrong stuff to
send to this chip, ground the enable, whatever.

Ground the enable?

What video card?

I was intending to be helpful, not turned into the way to get on the
better-than-you box because using cute little ways to belittle and trash what
I said and miss the whole point all together.

No, you weren't. If you were intending to be helpful you would have
posted some information about the problem, rather then just ranting.

Hardware, the specifics of the actual problem, what information you have
that causes you to believe Vista is at fault, and so forth.

 

[Guest]

I'm sorry that your life makes you feel so small that you somehow get
satisfaction out of discrediting strangers on a bulletin board. Do you feel
big and superior now? Awwww, that's good. Did you have a big mean bully most
of your life? Do you feel you've proved your not the kid that gets picked on
constantly anymore? Picking apart what someone says to make it a joke is not
normal in the big people world, you know this? Are you one of those people
that never had the oppertunity to go to school, yet became equally
successfull through hard work, yet still holds misplaced anger against anyone
who does try to get a higher education? Was it that you were somehow
intimidated by me and had to make sure everyone understood you were the
smartest? Ok. You win. Colin is sooooo much totally way cooler than me. OMG,
I am a monkey scratcher compared to the power of Colin's mind. I would want
to be just like you when I grow up, but I guess you have to have an
omnipotient knowledge of everyone that posts, down to knowing the proper
gender pronoun to use.

(A boy and his father get into an accident. The father is killed on impact.
The boy goes to the E.R. The doctor comes in and said "I'm sorry, I can't
operate on him. He's my son." How is this possible?)

Seriously, somewhere along the line it was somehow misinterpreted that what
I said as "I know more than all the MS pros because I'm an undergrad," which
is far, FAR, from what I meant. I've already had tech support through MS. If
I knew everything, why would I ever locate a support site? I know enough to
know that I don't know anything. I tried to elaborate in the post furthest to
the bottom, I hope you can understand the train of thought behind what I was
saying initally.

 

[NuT CrAcKeR]

"... and by default Vista configured the Graphics controller at too high of
a rate for the hardware."

I am sorry, but I feel the need to tactfully point this out:

The default configuration for a VGA adapter is 640 x 480 @ 60Hz. After you
get vista installed, it will try to automatically adjust the screen to 1024
x 768 @ 60Hz (only with your approval). Please show me 1 geforce video card
on the planet that can not meet that requirement.

I have a GeForce 7900GTX ... Vista did nothing evil to my vid card.

Have you tried booting into safe mode to remove the vid driver and reboot so
plug-n-play could take care of it?

 

[Rock]

Okay, "fried" is not the right term. "Corrupted" - satisfied semantics
buffs?
Obviously, I am not going to get anywhere with this. I was giving a
suggestion, because I had problems, and I had seen others had experienced
the
same thing. I definately did not expect the unprofessionalisim of being
attacked for valididty. I would say the quickest way for the data would be
through customer support ticket #1034393627

I gave you the links for how to file a bug report and suggestions to MS.
Posting in this newsgroup is not the way to do it.

 

[Guest]

Ok, thanks DevilPGD. Other than the "nuh-uh" when I said I was trying to be
helpful, I was giving a suggestion. I don't know that much about the boards.
You want specs, more info, that's resonable.

(I Keep posting stuff, but I'm not seeing it.)

Running Vista Ultimate 32
Desktop computer with the issue is a Systemax Venture (x86)
(2) 512 ddr 400 ram
250G HD
biostar P4M800-M7A motherboard
VIA Unichrome S3G PRO IGP
Pentium 4 Dual Core Processer @ 2.8Ghz, each 1Mb core, 64MB extended mem
(LGA775)

Okay, so the long story, which I have recited more times than I can count
over the past two weeks and was trying to avoid saying again, but on a
positive note, maybe people here might see something previously overlooked,
but doubtful. Im expecting any posts to just be more insults, and nothing of
any use. Maybe I should just rename the subject "Beat on the Brat"

I originally bought the retail box of Ultimate and installed it on my
laptop. My laptop's specs are
IBM Thinkpad R50e
Celeron M 880(?) @ 1.4Ghz
1271 MB Ram
Intel 82852/82855 GM/GME graphics controller

The first time I did just an upgrade, but everything was painfully slow, and
there was too many compatability issues. I backed up the hard drive and did a
clean install, figuring its easier to deal with one program incompatability
at a time. Nothing serious, silly stuff, Like Myspace Messenger, Quicktime,
some older games I didn't even play anymore, stuff like that.
Everything went smoothly. Everything is still good.

I was surprised that a clean install from an upgrade disk is not the same
as the clean install disk. I can't run aero, and can't upgrade the graphics
on my laptop, but blah, I still like it better than XP.

I ran it for about two weeks without issues.

I bought my father the desktop for christmas, and one of the main deciding
factors when I was choosing it in December was is it going to be Vista
Compatable, I didn't know the difference between premium and capable back
then. I saw the Vista logo thing, and it seemed decent enough.

Jumping back to recent, I took the same retail ultimate disk and did an
upgrade on the systemax. It crashed halfway through the install, so I did a
clean install. It went through. I got to the desktop and checked the
experience ratings. They were even worse than my laptop (it didn't have the
second 512 ram chip yet).

I hit update my score, ran through that fine.

The images looked choppy with a smaller y-axis individual value. I cant
think of how else to explain it. Like the slope could still be one, but the
increment on y is 0.5, while X increments=1. So I played around with the
resolution, refresh, all that, not unchecking the box that says don't allow
formats this can't handle found 1200*800 60Khz looked fine. Ran it on that
for about two weeks like that no problems.

WGA wasn't activated. Went to buy additional licence. Bought the licence.
Went to enter it and it said that the licence wasn't valid.

I noticed the product ID had OEM for the second set of three digits, and
that didn't seem right. OEM usually means comes with it right? It does for
cars. Well, this wasn't OEM. OEM OS was XP-SP2. I was annoyed as heck, spent
three weeks saving to buy the $220 key I can't use. I can't afford another
one, and I shouldn't have to. I bought it the right way. It was wrong that
vista assigned an ID of OEM.

So I called customer support. At that time they were updating or something,
cause everything was slow. Spent about four hours on the phone getting
shuffled between Customer support and tech support, had a guy tell me that he
can't do anything because his computer was down, and to try to call back and
hopefully I'll get someone who can help before he hung up, so I called back.
Eventually around close to 10PM I got a product key. Why it said OEM in the
Product ID? I don't know if I'll ever know.

The case # with everything you could possibly want to see 103-439-3627, can
you look it up if you work for Microsoft? If not, all the reports are on the
corrupt desktop, which I can't get on right now, and I'm leaving for the
weekend. I'll try to post them early next week.

Back to the situation, the next morning, last Saturday, a person called and
asked if the issue was resolved. My father and I were still trying to mess
around to get the graphics to look ok, and went to the via site to download
the driver, everything seemed fine for a bit. I asked the rep on the phone if
there were any resources available to help with finding drivers. He had a
tech call me back.

Using Remote Sharing of the desktop the tech looked around to see what was
going on. He said it looks like we had all the most up to date drivers but I
did need to upgrade the ram and that must be why everything was so slow. When
I tried to open the included games, after updating the driver from the
default one that vista set it to, or if I opened anything involving 3D, it
would blue screen crash. The tech said Ram is the first step. So I got more
Ram.

When it tried to do the experience index, at the evaluating media section,
it blue screen crashed, restart. Disabled the S3 driver. Update went through.
Left it disabled. Tried to play included solitare game. System froze, then
reboot. No blue screen.

The tech called back on Monday. He said the S3 is the right driver, graphics
driver is fine, graphics card is fine. I put it back on. Ran some
diagnostics. The audio driver or component is bad. The tech reserched, will
contact me the next day.

The crashing became more frequent, websites with graphics, screensavers,
stuff like that made it blue screen crash. Tech contacted me again. The audio
isn't supported, but the graphics card is damaged. We put it down to one
noch, two noch, and now the crashing stopped, but there is no 3D like on my
laptop, and it is UNBELIEVEABLY SLLLLOOOOWWWWW! I bought him the computer
because he had the same one for like 8 years running on 98 because xp wasn't
supported and he would become frustrated trying to surf the net with that
dinosaur. I wanted to get him something that might make it for another 8
years ahead. But this new one, since Vista, is almost as bad as the old 128M
Ram, 8G HD system he had.

The end result from the tech was that the card was now damaged. It wasn't
two days ago. There is nothing they can do to help solve the problem, I
needed to contact the manufacturer. They offered a rebate for the desktop if
I went back to XP. All set with trying to re-install everything again.

Contacted systemax. Systemax did not send the computer with XP. Since the
damage happened after I installed Vista, it's not covered under warranty. I'm
on my own.

So Microsoft points at the manufacturer, manufacturer points at microsoft.
At the end of it all, I'm saving up so hopefully by the end of the summer I
can afford a new graphics card. I don't think it's right, I shouldn't have to
buy a new card just to be able to play solitare, but like my first post, I
just have to deal with it.

I asked the tech why it didn't have anything like these problems before.
Sometimes vista brings out problems that were there that wouldn't matter in
XP. Sometimes things just aren't compatable. Why did it say it was fine on
the upgrade advisor? Why does VIA say vista capable chipset? So if it
happened to me, it happens to others.

So there's the finer details. What did it accomplish? Was that helpful? Were
the people here the developers? Is that why everyone is so defensive?

Yep, this stuff happens. Maybe because it's a systemax there is a
configuration that isn't typical. It's a new OS, of course there are going to
be situations that couldn't be predicted on pre-released.

Support case 103-439-3627. It has everything.

I don't like dealing with these forums. Unprofessional. Agressive. Hostile
environment. Not helpful at all. I wish I worked in a customer support
divison where I could imply the clients are lying, laugh at them, belittle
them. The sad thing is how did you treat your coffee waitress when she messed
up your order? What if she responded with the same attitude thats here? Great
Company. Vista community? No- Vista clique, Now with A.N.S.! arrogent nerd
syndrome.

 

[Guest]

I have a VIA S3G UniChrome that had the evil things happen to it. I know
GeForce is stable. That's why I chose it as a suggestion. VIA I think is all
Beta for the Vista drivers for that chipset. If evil things by chance were to
happen, it would be a nice gesture of microsoft to replace it with a stable
card. The rate I was refering to was the hardware acceleration. DxDiag listed
running DX10. UniChrome only supports up to 9. This is all by default, so the
plug and play driver is the one that screws it up more than the one I
downloaded and installed from VIA.

 

[Guest]

Thank You. I think it's a good idea to revise it first to make sure that
everything that wasn't clear here is resolved. Just out of curiosity, what is
appropriate for newsgroups? Why is there a suggestion for microsoft tab if
it's not the way to do it? What is the appropriate way to use the suggestion
tab? Looking at other posts, for the most part I see issues, and others
giving suggesstions, a few with people blogging, a few with gossip about the
people blogging. Do you even think that this is a reasonable idea?

 

[Guest]

Contacted systemax. Systemax did not send the computer with XP. Since the

damage happened after I installed Vista, it's not covered under warranty. I'm
on my own.

Whoops- ahead of myself. Fighting sleep. Systemax did not send the comp with
Vista. It was installed with XP.