Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Vista installation fiasco.

Sep 4, 2007 6:11AM PDT

I have a very strange issue when trying to install Vista. The install actually goes along rather quickly without errors but before I get to the logon screen, things come to a CRAWL! Both the audio and video are extremely choppy. The circular Windows Vista logo slowly fades in at about 4 frames per second and the audio is ridiculously choppy, taking 20+ seconds to get past this logo and to the logon screen. Once logged in, everything is still slow, maximizing/minimizing windows takes forever, etc. I figured this was the video drivers, so installed the latest drivers for my 8600GT, no change. Updated the sound card drivers, no change. No conflicts in device manager to point me in the right direction. I've searched the web and I can only find a similar problem stemming from VIA RAID storage drivers - I installed the latest from VIA, no change again.

Does anyone out there have any ideas? I'll be very grateful for any assistance!

Specs:
Gigabyte Nvidia 8600GT - Motherboard: MSI P4M900M2-L, Pentium 4 3.0Ghz, 2GB RAM, Vista Ultimate.

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Have you checked Task Manager?
Sep 4, 2007 8:43AM PDT

At the point where the Vista logo appears it wouldn't be unnecessary programs running, but I wonder if your CPU is taking on 100% utilization by some process. Do a ctrl + shift + Esc and check under both Performance and Processes. See what the CPU and RAM usage numbers look like. Also, try booting into Safe Mode (press F8 during boot) and see if the same problem occurs...that should also weed out the unnecessary Windows processes. It won't cure it but it should give us a better idea of what's riding on the back of a snail.

Let us know.
John

- Collapse -
Task manager OK, Safe Mode gives fast Vista...
Sep 6, 2007 12:46AM PDT

Ok, I pulled up Task Manager and found nothing using 100% of the CPU - nothing even close. I opened the volume control, changed the volume setting so I could hear the "ding" sound, and see if Task Manager showed anything then, but as the ding was taking 10 seconds to play out, there was no abnormal processor usage showing in the Task Manager. When booting into Safe Mode, everything DOES run nice and quick. I'm not sure if Vista has the old "step by step" driver boot option, but I'll check and see if I can isolate the problem. Any ideas?