Has Vista become (more) unstable?

[KingOfZeal]

So, my laptop has been acting... oddly lately, and it's all been spontaneous.

Mostly, the errors I'm seeing have to do with Firefox which, thanks to their new crash reporting system, I can now actually post the reports. Below is the list I pulled from about:crashes (if you have Firefox 3 you can see it, if you didn't know about it). You can look up the Report ID at the link below to see the crash details in all it's data dump glory.

Report ID Date Submitted
46fe0c80-450a-11dd-99c7-001cc4e2bf68 6/28/2008 7:03 AM
d0b05c5e-4509-11dd-8d41-001a4bd43ef6 6/28/2008 7:00 AM
5d81a300-4509-11dd-8dc1-001a4bd43ed6 6/28/2008 6:57 AM
f87e65eb-4508-11dd-a3f4-001cc45a2ce4 6/28/2008 6:54 AM
7bc36eba-4508-11dd-bf03-001a4bd43ef6 6/28/2008 6:51 AM
3a643382-4508-11dd-a09e-0013211cbf8a 6/28/2008 6:49 AM
db5f6430-4507-11dd-beb4-001a4bd43e5c 6/28/2008 6:46 AM
9a54dad9-4507-11dd-b031-001321b13766 6/28/2008 6:44 AM
59ff937d-44c1-11dd-ad3f-001cc45a2c28 6/27/2008 10:21 PM
f3c44814-44c0-11dd-92af-001cc45a2c28 6/27/2008 10:19 PM
55841154-44c0-11dd-a6ef-001a4bd43ef6 6/27/2008 10:14 PM
018e4830-44c0-11dd-81eb-001cc4e2bf68 6/27/2008 10:12 PM
a8822233-44bf-11dd-8666-001a4bd43ed6 6/27/2008 10:09 PM
e850e0e1-44be-11dd-ab0c-001a4bd43ed6 6/27/2008 10:04 PM
869d7fe8-44be-11dd-9ae9-001a4bd43e5c 6/27/2008 10:01 PM
1f75c135-44be-11dd-bbe8-001a4bd43e5c 6/27/2008 9:58 PM
e4905638-44bd-11dd-a34b-001a4bd43e5c 6/27/2008 9:57 PM
b1dfefd4-44bd-11dd-a448-001cc4e2bf68 6/27/2008 9:55 PM

Crash Reports

Now, the first thing I see on the earlier reports is EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION, which to me makes me think UAC. However, I did try running firefox with Admin rights, and it still crashed. I've disabled every add-on, literally, I've started new sessions in case there was a problem with the old. As you can see from the timestamps, they happen every few minutes, which makes doing anything online difficult, even with saved sessions.

But, firefox isn't the only thing that's been acting up. Now, for some reason, my Windows Update isn't registering SP1 as installed, and it wants me to download and install it. When I do so, the installation fails for some reason that can never be answered with the supplied help file (the error code it gives me is never in the file). Each time I try to install it, it gives a different error code. So, I'm in the process of downloading it from my desktop computer via personal FTP (which I've had set up for this sort of thing) since my browser doesn't want to stay open long enough to download it (see above) and I refuse to use IE.

I'm also getting very, very, random program crashes (things like, according to my Performance and Reliability monitor, DWM, Explorer, TrustedInstaller, consent, firefox x8, sidebar x6, and svchost, and that's just last night when this started, I won't know about today until midnight). I also have 6 cases of "OS stopped working", which probably coinside with the many BSOD's I've been seeing as of late.


So, I'm curious on what you think it might be. I'm running Vista Ultimate, and havn't been having any problems up until this (which holds to my theory that Ultimate is what Vista should be, everything else is chopped down versions making them more unstable), nothing has changed hardware or software wise. This is a laptop, so moving to a different OS won't work. There's a very good chance that if needed I could back up everything if I need to do a wipe, but I really really don't want to do that. I'm hoping (re)installing Sp1 will fix it all, but... anything else?

[Mhurron]

Re: Has Vista become (more) unstable?

Reinstall Service Pack 1, but not through Windows Update.

[DakAttack]

Re: Has Vista become (more) unstable?

Windows OSs have always lost stability over time.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Has Vista become (more) unstable?

I've been having program crashes on Vista since I got this laptop. I just figured it came with the freaking OS and there was nothing I could do about it.

[little ninja]

Re: Has Vista become (more) unstable?

Windows OSs have always lost stability over time.

Pretty much, Theres always a file going bad, being corrupted, lost, damaged, and rewritten. Thats why everyones diagnostics end with a fresh install.

[KingOfZeal]

Re: Has Vista become (more) unstable?

Well, I did try to install SP1 via the standalone, but I could because "I don't have a correct language pack installed, I need to have English (or other) language packs installed". Duh.

I ended up getting the Windows Update version to work (at about 1/10th of the downloaded size of the standalone), and the problems I've been having have seemed to disappear, but in the past some of the similar problems I've had (problems which aren't as extensive as I had over the weekend) have been solved after about 3-4 restarts, with each restart fixing one or two of the multitude of problems that occur spontaneously.

Honestly, I do like Vista, with few complaints. I think it's a much more elegant than XP (I do so like the native transparency), but those few things I can complain about are... fairly big things.