What's the REAL problem with using Vista?

My computer is running Vista Business x64 and a ATI X1950 graphics card.
SL runs just fine under XP on the same computer.

But, when in Vista, I instantly crash when going in world. Oh, this is not ALL the time, sometimes it runs just fine for weeks, then it starts acting up again.

Does anybody know what the real reason is for this behaviour? What's the facts about this problem?

Well in my opinion its just the crappy drivers that are available for Vista. Just a few weeks ago I installed a laptop with exactly the same specs as the one i am on SL with, but with Vista installed. Well it barely ran (framerate of around 3-4) and crashed within minutes. The same laptop with XP runs just as well as mine. Both use an unsupported Intel chipset and you can fry eggs on them after an hour or so . As far as my knowledge reaches, i can only come to the conclusion that the drivers for Vista still are crappy compared to XP.

Another thread suggested checking for QuickTime updates to solve this problem.

I've tried both with the latest QuickTime, and completely without QuickTime (uninstalled). Doesn't seem to do any difference at all.

For me SL actually runs better in Vista than in XP, by about 5-10fps. The only major problem I've had is where nVidia's drivers cause Vista's graphical subsystem to time out, but this is an issue with their drivers and occurs in other programs as well.

As for Quicktime, I've never really thought about it before, but I suppose it could be causing problems. I know I've had major issues getting Quicktime to work right with Vista x64, but since it's only supported in 32-bit Vista (which it runs relatively fine under), it's anyone's guess as to when or if Apple will fix the issues in the 64-bit version of Vista.

I've also heard that ATi's Vista drivers and Vista support in general isn't really up to par. Though I can't confirm it myself, I stopped using ATi after getting 3 video cards in a row from them that were either dead on arrival or kept overheating just running XP itself.

I'm sure all of the above are most of the problems. Vista is a new OS and just like XP when it came out was full of problems for a couple years until Microsoft and the driver venders got on the same page and fixed both to run smoothly......so we are almost half way through that period. But, I'm surprised no one mentioned the very obvious.......MEMORY HOG!!! Vista requires a huge amount of RAM........and so does SL. Most people with 2 gigs of RAM would say they have enough. But Vista requires a gig and SL requires a gig.........that leaves nothing for any other stuff. The computers are huffing and puffing just to keep up.........toss in an instant message program, email checker, AV scan, browser or most anything else and it's only a matter of time before something fails. That is usually SL since the OS will do whatever necessary to keep itself alive and running.

Get more RAM. Shut off any instant messager you might have, disable email checkers make sure you don't have a scheduled scan of some type set to come on while in SL and keep your browser closed. And maybe later this year when Microsoft comes out the service pack 1 some of that will be fixed.

I'm waiting for service pack 1 to be out for at least one year before I even consider Vista.......like what I did before moving to XP.

The timeout problem was fixed with an optional hotfix and will be available in SP1.

The hotfix is here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938194

I already have that one, it made the frequency go down a bit, but didn't get rid of the problem.

One of the major changes in Vista is the sound architecture. Sound is processed in an enterely new way compared to all previous Windows. I don't know the technical details, but this is the reason that sound card manufacturers like Creative (Soundblaster) still haven't got their drivers and supporting software 100% Vista compatible. I always hear about graphical issues related to Vista and sl, but sound could have a major influence too. Before SL was made Vista-ready I heard crackling noises before crashing. I don't hear them anymore. So my opinion is that it's not only graphical issues that cause problems with Vista and sl.

I must say that I run sl on Vista-32 without any major problems these days. Crashes are reduced to about one every two or three days or even less. That's a big improvement, compared to a few months ago.