Vista video corruption. Repeatable.

[chromian]

Hi. This is my first time posting on Vista issues.

I am running a 3rd party application on a new Emachines desktop with Vista
Home Premium. The same application is widely used for some time on XP systems
all over the world, without this problem.

The application is running a temperature program, which can run from about 1
to 3 hours. As part of this application a realtime graph is displayed, which
is continuously updated, showing vessel temperature and pressure.

After the application terminates, I usually leave the realtime charting
application running all night. In the morning, if I right-click on START, the
screen goes mad, task bar icons are drawn at the top of the screen instead of
at the bottom. The realtime graph window appears and disappears. The START
menu reduces to the few items normally at the top (Update Windows, etc).
There are no longer entries for SEARCH, PROGRAMS, HELP etc. And no means of
turning the computer off, except via the CTRL ALT DEL method.

It seems the computer is still running, the realtime plot is still updating
temp and pressure, CTRL ALT DEL works. I guess "Explorer" has died.

The only means of recovery is to reboot, via CTRL ALT DEL.

If anyone has a clue as to what might be happening, I'd appreciate any and
all assistance.

Since this is a process computer, I must fix this problem one way or
another. This is the first system of its kind that the 3rd party application
has run on Vista, so there might be a conflict with the realtime function?

Vista has not been updated. I am reluctant to even try, as Vista SP1 killed
my home computer stone dead (I have put XP Pro on instead).

I need a clue as to what to do before I attempt any Vista updates. E.g.

Is there a logging program out there that can record debugging info that
might be useful?
Will Compatibility Mode do anything??

Thanks a lot if you have read this far! I do hope you can help. I am
assuming (maybe wrongly) that this problem is beyond the normal scope of
Emachines tech support, so I haven't tried that yet. And the Vista is OEM so
Microsoft will not support their product.
Ian

 

[Chuck]

I'd be having a serious look at the "Application" and the temperature
program. It sounds like you might be using something like "Lab View".
If so, there should be updates available.

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

I'd think you're spot on here.

He might also want to run Task Manager, turn on "Show processes from all
users" (just in case), go to the Processes tab, turn on Handles, Threads,
and GDI Objects, and then verify those numbers at the start of the day
versus at the end when things are in a bad way.

I'd think that that application is badly written and causing resource
starvation.