(Very) frequent Vista crashes

[jamess]

I have Vista B32 that came preinstalled. I like it now, especially because when I changed the HDD for 7K200, it is now noticably faster and is probably about the same /speed as XP Pro on the previous laptop was.

However - my Vista crashes VERY frequently, meaning that at least once or twice per 8 hours at work, I get messages such as "this and that" had to be stopped ... Vista is diagnosing etc. And it happens all the time! I hate it. Office 2007, Excel 2007 especially, crashes almost on every EXit and it is frustrating.

I have applied all updates Windows update or System Update by ThinkVantage have to offer.

What should I do? This system is becoming unreliable, because although I can recover my work in Office and in majority of other (Adobe) Suites, I can't rely on my laptop. I'd be very sad to learn that a file I've been working on for weeks suddenly gets corrupted. (I do make backups though, but still).

Any suggestions?

[mgo]

Did you image your old drive before installing the new onw? That should have worked. Or, did you run Rescue & Recovery and re-install onto the new drive?

Have you run CHKDSK to see how the new drive is doing healthwise?

By the way....doing backups is -very smart- congrats on doing that.

I have Vista B32 that came preinstalled. I like it now, especially because when I changed the HDD for 7K200, it is now noticably faster and is probably about the same /speed as XP Pro on the previous laptop was.

However - my Vista crashes VERY frequently, meaning that at least once or twice per 8 hours at work, I get messages such as "this and that" had to be stopped ... Vista is diagnosing etc. And it happens all the time! I hate it. Office 2007, Excel 2007 especially, crashes almost on every EXit and it is frustrating.

I have applied all updates Windows update or System Update by ThinkVantage have to offer.

What should I do? This system is becoming unreliable, because although I can recover my work in Office and in majority of other (Adobe) Suites, I can't rely on my laptop. I'd be very sad to learn that a file I've been working on for weeks suddenly gets corrupted. (I do make backups though, but still).

Any suggestions?

[jamess]

Well, I backed everything up onto external HDD. I then removed the old drive, inserted the new one , did restore from Recovery media DVDs, did another custom restore (because I could not do it directly from DVDs), removed all the crappy programs that otherwise come factory installed, loaded my own files and Adobe Suite CS3 Master and MS Office 2007 (which is about all that i need). And, same as on the old drive, I get many crashes which are a big pain in the behind. It simply doesn't work for me, having to restart or close some programs etc.

Is anyone else experiencing this "XYZ program has been stopped etc" warning?

Thanks

[ryengineer]

Consider looking at: Windows Vista Performance tips.

Window Vista indexes for a while after installation and can be unusable during that period.

In my books, to a certian extent Windows Vista is still unstable.

[mgo]

- my Vista crashes VERY frequently, meaning that at least once or twice per 8 hours at work, I get messages such as "this and that" had to be stopped ... Vista is diagnosing etc. And it happens all the time! I hate it. Office 2007, Excel 2007 especially, crashes almost on every EXit and it is frustrating.

As ryengineer mentioned, Vista is still a little goofy at times, and is not a well tuned product yet, but still and all....your machine does have the horsepower to run Vista and all these crashes are not normal. I make that statement based on my experience with four ThinkPad machines and one desktop which have run Vista just fine. Stable, pretty responsive (once the "features" are turned off, and my Office 2007 apps run with no problem.

I'm convinced that trying a total re-install on a bare hard drive is the way to go, if you haven't done that yet.

ryengineer indicated that indexing runs a lot. True. It is buggy and Microsoft doesn't seem to have a clue about how to fix indexing. Windows Desktop Search in XP is also nutty, and it after a re-boot it will rescan its database three times before settling down! That's why I just go to hibernate instead of shutdown when ever possible.

In keeping with Microsoft's "nannyware" philosophy, indexing cannot be turned off, but you can de-select bunches of folders to make it shut the heck up much sooner. This may help you in your troubleshooting, since that would free up the machine's resources for running programs.

[jamess]

As said - indexing is done on my PC and the system (with Vista) is quite responsive. It's actually about the same as XP was.

The only drawback of vista that I personally am experiencing daily is that stupid "this and that service/program had to be stopped" etc...

I hope SP1 will solve many of these issues? I hope it's out this year sometime.

[thaug]

Have you run System Update and installed the newest drivers? You may also want to look at making the Active Protection System less sensitive.

[jamess]

Yes I did - I ran every update there is No help though.

I too thought of Active Protection, but it just doesn't make sense because if there is absolutely no shock whatsoever, I guess there's no need to worry that APS would be stopping the disk in any way, making Vista crash. Or am I wrong?

[thaug]

I would disable APS and see if that improves things a bit. Even though you may not think it experienced a shock, the software may still be doing something.

[SHoTTa35]

ok check the eventviewer to see what's in there:

start - type: event

and it should come up. Check for the errors that happened about the same time and then paste them here so we can read. The "blah blah blah has stopped" is what we need to know what's causing the problems.

[jamess]

ID: 1, Application Name: Microsoft Office Excel, Application Version: 12.0.6024.5000, Microsoft Office Version: 12.0.4518.1014. This session lasted 3051 seconds with 240 seconds of active time. This session ended with a crash.

ID: 1, Application Name: Microsoft Office Excel, Application Version: 12.0.6024.5000, Microsoft Office Version: 12.0.4518.1014. This session lasted 277 seconds with 180 seconds of active time. This session ended with a crash.

ID: 1, Application Name: Microsoft Office Excel, Application Version: 12.0.6024.5000, Microsoft Office Version: 12.0.4518.1014. This session lasted 11 seconds with 0 seconds of active time. This session ended with a crash.

Office Diagnostics has determined that there is some evidence of repeated problems.

Faulting application EXCEL.EXE, version 12.0.6024.5000, time stamp 0x465f21c3, faulting module OLEAUT32.dll, version 6.0.6000.16386, time stamp 0x4549bd95, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x000041c0, process id 0x13b4, application start time 0x01c807fe98c1e7d7.

The target file for the Windows Feedback Platform (a DLL file containing the list of problems on this computer that require additional data collection for diagnosis) could not be parsed. The error code was 8014FFF9.

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error querying for the IVssWriterCallback interface. hr = 0x80070005. This is often caused by incorrect security settings in either the writer or requestor process.

Operation:
Gathering Writer Data

Context:
Writer Class Id: {e8132975-6f93-4464-a53e-1050253ae220}
Writer Name: System Writer
Writer Instance ID: {51555176-a52c-4644-8cc8-055fee852ace}

Failed to get the Crawl Scope Manager with error=0x80070005.

just to name a few...

[eyecon82]

Do you have turbo memory??

My crashes/bsod's were solved the following way:
1)disabled turbo memory
2)disabled APS

(i had to do both, doing 1 or the other resulted in bsod's and freezes)

------------------------------

now something new i heard is that if you disable the hybrid disc option under power management it will solve all problems..this wa you dont have to disable turbo mem and APS

[ryengineer]

Do you have turbo memory??

My crashes/bsod's were solved the following way:
1)disabled turbo memory
2)disabled APS........snip

Most users unpack the package for turbo memory but actually forget or do not realize to install it through the .exe file in c:\DRIVERS\VISTA\TurboMem :

x61t BSOD w/in 20 minutes of going on battery power.

[jamess]

i don't have turbo memory, but i do have APS. I'll try disabling APS - just have to figure out how?!

Thanks

[ryengineer]

i don't have turbo memory, but i do have APS. I'll try disabling APS - just have to figure out how?!........snip

Double click APS icon in the task pane and then uncheck "Enable Active Protection System".

[jamess]

Thanks. I did it. I'll report if there's any difference!

[eyecon82]

Thanks. I did it. I'll report if there's any difference!

'

Thanks..let us know how that goes...you can also try disabling the hybrid power management as well

[sveintore]

My excel-crashes (office 2007) were solved by going into excel settings, addons, COM-addons (on the bottom) and removing the tick in front of the Send to bluetooth-function.
Common problem I'm told.

Sorry about the vague description. Got norwegian office, can't remember the english words

Edit: found this now:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=52767

[arni]

...Faulting application EXCEL.EXE, version 12.0.6024.5000, time stamp 0x465f21c3, faulting module OLEAUT32.dll, version 6.0.6000.16386, time stamp 0x4549bd95, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x000041c0, process id 0x13b4, application start time 0x01c807fe98c1e7d7...

Regarding your problems with excel there are problems with the "Send to Bluetooth"-Addin just as the writer above stated. I narrowed it down on one machine which was experiencing the same errors. The problem stems from the fact that the Bluetooth Add-in tries to refer to profile data at a hard-wired folder location
of "C:\Documents and Settings"Your User"\My Documents\Bluetooth Exchange Folder". But on Vista even if the "old" folder locations are mirrored as junctions the Add-in sometimes could not resolve the real folder location.

One solution was to disable the Add-in which refers to C:\Windows\system32\btsendto_office.dll". Another solution is to create a dummy folder just as noted above in your user profile like "C:\Users"Your User"\My Documents\Bluetooth Exchange Folder".

But please check that you also have the latest bluetooth drivers for your thinkpad, cause on my TP there have never been such issues.

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error querying for the IVssWriterCallback interface. hr = 0x80070005. This is often caused by incorrect security settings in either the writer or requestor process.

Operation:
Gathering Writer Data

Context:
Writer Class Id: {e8132975-6f93-4464-a53e-1050253ae220}
Writer Name: System Writer
Writer Instance ID: {51555176-a52c-4644-8cc8-055fee852ace}

Failed to get the Crawl Scope Manager with error=0x80070005.

just to name a few...

Regarding your VSS Problems i would try following solution:

1. Run Checkdisk for every drive with the option /f to automatically correct any problems.
2. Delete every Restore Point in System Properties.
3. Run Checkdisk again
4. Defragment your drive

I noticed that sometimes when using Imaging software as well as R&R there are problems regarding Restore Points in Vista. Clearing all Restore Points often solves the VSSWriterCallback errors.