Windows Vista killed my PC

Hi,

tried to install Vista Business a short while ago and it killed my PC. To put the thing into some perspective:
System was an
AMD 3500+
2 GB RAM
300 GB SATA Disk
Gigabyte K8N Ultra 9 Mainboard (Nforce4 Ultra Chipset)
Gigabyte X800XL Graphicscard
2 DVD drives

Vista was set up to dual-boot with XP on the machine and a fresh Install. After installation everything was fine, only sounddriver missing, but that was autoinstalled with the first connect to windows update. Played around for about 3 hours with no problems.
Then I did a shutdown of the system. And there the problems came:

Vista showed the shutdown sequence and then turned off the monitor, but the computer kept running. About 2 secs after that one of the DVD drives made really loud noises that it never did before.
Three times a sound that sounded like KCHHHHH KCHHHH KCHHHH. (Somewhat like it was scratching on the disk).
After that the PC still did not turn off. I left it running for about 1 min before I shut it off by 5 sec Power-Button press.

I immediately tried to turn it on again to see if anything was damaged and it DID NOT TURN ON. In fact the computer itself did turn on (got power) however I did not get any video signal and the motherboard did not even do the POST BEEP sound.
After more than one day of disassembling my computer and trying stuff I found out that the graphics card AND the DVD-drive that made the strange noise were both completely defective.

After replacing the grapics card (the original cost about 300$!) and detatching the DVD (can temporarily live with a single only) I could boot again. Booted into Vista and tried to backup stuff (the HDD seemed without damage) using my second DVD-drive on DVD-RAMs. After some 30% the DVD-drive just got slower and stopped responding ultimately. So I had to reboot again.

This time I got a similar effect. First the monitor switched off and the computer kept running then (DIFFERENT FROM BEFORE) the HDD!! started making strange noises (like the DVD before) it sounded like KLA-KLAK KLA-KLAK KLA-KLAK (again three times). 15 seconds after that then the compter shut off.

Restarted and still worked, but booted into XP and hope things would be well there. They were. Backed everything up. Then did a last try and updated the firmware for the Motherboard from R6->R8 and got the new NVidia Nforce drivers. Shut down normally (in XP monitor and computer switch off nearly simultaniously at shutoff)

Booted into Vista with the new Bios. Vista did a lot of hardware reinstallation (due to bios-update) and asked to reboot. Did so and got same effect as before video-off/strange noises/20 sec computer running after video-off and then shutdown.


After that I did not dare to start Vista anymore, because I'm really sure it is just a matter of time until the HDD dies at this point, too.
Since then XP worked (with the new hardware component) without any problems. If I would have to guess I'd say the sound the HDD makes sounds like it is spinning up, then immediately doing a really nasty headseek and then immediately shutting off, three times in a row. AND it is reproduceable. 100% of the time.

There have to be some warnings put out for users who are upgrading/switching to vista that it might physically damage their computer!

Has anyone experience similar things? Is this shutoff behavior even normal for Vista?? Is there a way to correct that? How could this even damage hardware?

Foxfire wrote:

There have to be some warnings put out for users who are upgrading/switching to vista that it might physically damage their computer!

Has anyone experience similar things? Is this shutoff behavior even normal for Vista?? Is there a way to correct that? How could this even damage hardware?

Are you sure you didn't press the yellow sleep button instead of the shutdown command in the menu?
If things in your computer break it's because a component fails, not because of Vista.

ZippyV wrote:



Foxfire wrote: There have to be some warnings put out for users who are upgrading/switching to vista that it might physically damage their computer! Has anyone experience similar things? Is this shutoff behavior even normal for Vista?? Is there a way to correct that? How could this even damage hardware?

Are you sure you didn't press the yellow sleep button instead of the shutdown command in the menu?

Sorry to say that, but did you even read the post? Of course I did not use the sleep button. And as I wrote the shutdown always works up to the very end of it (Windows will show logging off user/ shutting down machine...) and then things happen.

ZippyV wrote:


If things in your computer break it's because a component fails, not because of Vista.

If you asked me before this happened I would most likely have given the same answer. But I simply don't believe in coincindences that big. And as I wrote the "problems" with the (S)ATA bus are actually reproducable!



By the way - forgot that in the original post and might be quite important: All SATA RAID functionallity is disabled in the Bios.

Finally someone else has the problem: I've encoutered the same thing with the last RC. Same thing with HDD (mine's IDE ATA btw)

I first thought my disk crashed  but was able to regain access to it by hanging it in an USB shell. Otherwise all my pc's (that's 3) would hang before the post.

 

I also had it immediately after the installation's first correct boot, but mine did do a correct shutdown unlike your pc ...

Just sharing the knwoledge, cause i thought it was bad hardware , but now I am reconsidering my thoughts

Well the hanging was solved by replacing the defective graphicscard, so this is likely something else.

And although my HDD made these strange noises at shutdown it was not damaged. Only a DVD-drive and the graphics-card.

At least for the graphics card, I'd suspect it wasn't a coincidence, but the card was about to die anyways.  Vista puts a lot of stress on the graphics card--  it was probably running full power for longer than it ever has before.  Most likely, Vista only accelerated the card's death because it's so graphics intensive.

Still stumped about the ATA issue, though.  Tried updating your drivers?

CannotResolveSymbol wrote:

At least for the graphics card, I'd suspect it wasn't a coincidence, but the card was about to die anyways.  Vista puts a lot of stress on the graphics card--  it was probably running full power for longer than it ever has before.  Most likely, Vista only accelerated the card's death because it's so graphics intensive.

I wouldn't say Vista is that graphics intensive. As I've posted here before, the fan on my graphics card burned out a while back, and my card ran without cooling for more than a month, which went undiscovered for so long because I rarely play games. As soon as I started to play games (e.g. Trackmania Nations), the computer would lock up in minutes because of the GPU overheating. Even Vista's solitaire, which uses Direct3D, locked up the system in under five minutes.

But Vista itself didn't. Despite the fact that Vista ran with the DWM and all bells and whistles enabled, it never overheated the GPU even when it was running without cooling.

Now this was not RTM (can't remember what the current build was at the time) but since then DWM performance has only improved, so I won't buy that RTM is somehow much more GPU intensive than that beta build.

Sven Groot wrote:



CannotResolveSymbol wrote: At least for the graphics card, I'd suspect it wasn't a coincidence, but the card was about to die anyways.  Vista puts a lot of stress on the graphics card--  it was probably running full power for longer than it ever has before.  Most likely, Vista only accelerated the card's death because it's so graphics intensive.

I wouldn't say Vista is that graphics intensive. As I've posted here before, the fan on my graphics card burned out a while back, and my card ran without cooling for more than a month, which went undiscovered for so long because I rarely play games. As soon as I started to play games (e.g. Trackmania Nations), the computer would lock up in minutes because of the GPU overheating. Even Vista's solitaire, which uses Direct3D, locked up the system in under five minutes.

But Vista itself didn't. Despite the fact that Vista ran with the DWM and all bells and whistles enabled, it never overheated the GPU even when it was running without cooling.

Now this was not RTM (can't remember what the current build was at the time) but since then DWM performance has only improved, so I won't buy that RTM is somehow much more GPU intensive than that beta build.

It's still more graphics-intensive than XP, which is bound to bring up some previously-undiscovered issues if you've got a faulty graphics card...

CannotResolveSymbol wrote:



At least for the graphics card, I'd suspect it wasn't a coincidence, but the card was about to die anyways.  Vista puts a lot of stress on the graphics card--  it was probably running full power for longer than it ever has before.  Most likely, Vista only accelerated the card's death because it's so graphics intensive.

Still stumped about the ATA issue, though.  Tried updating your drivers?

Well I had the Vanguard Beta running for two whole days in January and Vista only for about 3 hours, so this doesn't seem very probable to me.

And yes - the last thing I tried was updating the drivers with the latest drivers from nvidia - didn't change anything.

The computer is about 2 years old and never showed any problem related to HW (like bluescreens, hangs or similar stuff)

Error Lies Between Keyboard and Chair ...

sirhomer wrote:

Watch out for anti-virus programs that randomally start scanning, especially with laptops. I found NAV would do this and it can kill your HDD pretty quickly.

It was a pure Vista install. No single other program installed except the updates from Windows Update and later the Nvidia drivers.

Moreover everything works fine WHILE Vista is running. The problem ONLY occurs at the end of a shutdown/reboot!

Are you sure this is not a PSU problem? Maybe your PSU has problems that combined with Vista's new power settings and a motherboard with a buggy ACPI implementation could have damaged the components.

For the DVD part, could it be because of non-standard firmware?

Remembering once upon a time, a linux kernel update make use of certain functionality that was not previously used before, but in L brand 's controller board it was used to do something else, so that update killed almost every DVD drive of those 3-4 models that installed that kernel version.

The manufacturer later published firmware upgrade and do not have this problem again.

From your description that it started to make funny noise before it died, it makes me thinking it was doing something adnormal at that time...

cheong wrote:

For the DVD part, could it be because of non-standard firmware?

Remembering once upon a time, a linux kernel update make use of certain functionality that was not previously used before, but in L brand 's controller board it was used to do something else, so that update killed almost every DVD drive of those 3-4 models that installed that kernel version.

The manufacturer later published firmware upgrade and do not have this problem again.

From your description that it started to make funny noise before it died, it makes me thinking it was doing something adnormal at that time...

If it's the one I'm familiar with, the "problem" was that the OEM used a reserved ATAPI command to allow them to upgrade the CDROM's firmware, a command code which was later allocated for use as some kind power down/saving feature. D'oh !

BTW, I'm favouring Cescotto's idea of a similar issue with the power down, specifically with the motherboard's nVidia chipset. No real reason, just a psychic gut feeling... I don't mind being wrong

Sounds like PSU to me...

cescotto wrote:

Are you sure this is not a PSU problem? Maybe your PSU has problems that combined with Vista's new power settings and a motherboard with a buggy ACPI implementation could have damaged the components.

Thats one of the first things that seem to make sense to me. It would even possibly explain the simultanious death of the graphics-card and the drive.

The situation could have been:
Say Vista sends some ACPI commands to power the devices down at shutdown. Something doesn't work and the devices immediately power up again and Vista immediately tries to power them down again. (Can't explain why this happenes exactly three times ?)
It could just be that the graphics card did not survive that fast and repeated powerup/powerdown sequence. And the other drive might not have died because there was no CD inserted at that time, so it did not have to (mechanically) spin up.

So the big question would remain: Is this a defect of the Motherboard (which seems unlikely to be due to the facts that
a) It did never have any issues with either XP, nor with any Linuxes
b) I did update the bios firmware, but it did not change anything. Afaik most parts of the ACPI interfaces are "handled" there, so this seems unlikely

or is it a general incompatibility of Vista (and its ACPI-Interface) with this hardware (combination) - in that case MS should warn or/and prevent Vista installs on that hardware.

It would be really nice to hear something from MS about this issue.

Foxfire wrote:



cescotto wrote: Are you sure this is not a PSU problem? Maybe your PSU has problems that combined with Vista's new power settings and a motherboard with a buggy ACPI implementation could have damaged the components.

Thats one of the first things that seem to make sense to me. It would even possibly explain the simultanious death of the graphics-card and the drive.

The situation could have been:
Say Vista sends some ACPI commands to power the devices down at shutdown. Something doesn't work and the devices immediately power up again and Vista immediately tries to power them down again. (Can't explain why this happenes exactly three times ?)
It could just be that the graphics card did not survive that fast and repeated powerup/powerdown sequence. And the other drive might not have died because there was no CD inserted at that time, so it did not have to (mechanically) spin up.

So the big question would remain: Is this a defect of the Motherboard (which seems unlikely to be due to the facts that
a) It did never have any issues with either XP, nor with any Linuxes
b) I did update the bios firmware, but it did not change anything. Afaik most parts of the ACPI interfaces are "handled" there, so this seems unlikely

or is it a general incompatibility of Vista (and its ACPI-Interface) with this hardware (combination) - in that case MS should warn or/and prevent Vista installs on that hardware.

It would be really nice to hear something from MS about this issue.

This is probably a defect of the motherboard (buggy ACPI, it happened also with the transition to XP) and/or a defect of the PSU (maybe it screws up the voltages) but probably both. I don't think that a dvd drive and an HDD can break only because of a buggy motherboard, there should be some voltage issues there.

The HDD did not break, it was a DVD and the graphics-card. The HDD just does these funny noises (EVERY time you shut off), but it didn't break.

And with the reasons above I don't believe that there is actually a hardware defect in either the PSU nor the motherboard. Of course this is possible, but imho the facts show more chance towards a general incompatibility.

Does anybody have this motherboard (and perhaps a similar setup) and could tell if it works without any pauses at shutdown with Vista??