Windows 7 is pissing me off!!!!

[Serapth]

So, I have been running Win7 since Beta and its been awesome, downright amazing. I ran it on a Quad Core AMD desktop machine since launch till about a month ago and I never once had a problem. That said, something has changed.

My old Toshiba a200 Core2 duo is now having power options that are driving me nuts. The second I hooked it up to a second monitor its gone completely stupid. Sometimes, when it goes into sleep mode, it never wakes up and has to be restarted with a hard power cycle. If that doesnt happen, one of the screens ( generally the laptop display ), will never come back online, which requires a reboot. Very irritating.


That said, this is NOTHING compared to my primary laptop. Its a i7 720 based machine, 4GB, ATI4650 Dell laptop with what is basically a fresh install on Win Ultimate 7 pro. Again, it has the power issues of my other machine when hooked up to an external monitor and doesn't do sleep well.

But the part that is really pissing me off, it just locks up. No event viewer error reported, no devices showing as missing, nothing... it just runs for hours and days, then locks up. Sometimes it simply runs for minutes then locks up. Basically no input, no CTRL+ALT+DEL, no clock updating. Ive let it sit for about 45 minutes after a lock and never got a response. It locked up sometime overnight last night, while doing nothing.

That said, there is one consistent aspect to the lockups. First I thought it was Chrome, then thunderbird, etc... I had a few lockups on Thunderbirds "new machine arrive" baloon in the tray. So, I tried not using Chrome and Thunderbird and switched to Windows Live Mail (blech!) and Firefox ( ewww ) and things ran super smooth, until this morning, when again I experienced a lockup some time around 8 am. Then everything worked fine until about 2:30 this afternoon, then while my email ( Live Mail ) was acting stupid, I switched over to Firefox to google something and LOCK.

Starting to lead me to believe its network driver related, but I havent got a clue at this moment. The complete lack of errors in event viewer is making this basically a needle/haystack search.

I've done the full system stress tests ( ship with Win7 ) and all components check out ok, so it shouldn't be that. Some things ive googled say AHCI can be part of the problem, so I tried switching to ATA in BIOS... trust me, Win7 does not like that!!!


Only thing out of the ordinary is I am running desktop ATI drivers instead of Dells ATI drivers. I was running Dells driver and experiencing these problems so I highly doubt its that.


HELP!

EDIT: Win 7 Ultimate 64bit

[TrackZero]

Shouldn't you just...call Dell, since it's a new laptop? I'd be blaming their driver support or a hardware fault before the OS for that type of problem.

[Serapth]

Shouldn't you just...call Dell, since it's a new laptop? I'd be blaming their driver support or a hardware fault before the OS for that type of problem.

First off, Dell support is outsourced to India. My one experience so far involved sitting on hold for 45 minutes, before getting someone whose English I simply couldn't understand, so I got a transfer to someone whose English I mostly understood ( after 20 more minutes on hold ) and this person just ran through a script. Frankly, I wish I could have canceled my order at this momment... Dell has really gone downhill for customer service.

Second, I reinstalled from scratch the second I got it. They shipped with Home Pro or Ultimate, whatever its called, but I needed Domain support so I had to do a fresh install. You gotta know they are going to blame your install the second you call.

Finally, its a lockup that is completely intermitent and isnt leaving errors. Whoever you get will get you to do something stupid, like restart or run a scandisk and when the problem magically doesnt reoccured, call it fixed.



I have a very low regard for most companies non business level tech support, if you can't tell.


Oh, Intel PM55 chipset... done a bit of googling and this looks like it might be the source of some problems.

[mightbe]

So buying a dell seems to be your problem then.

[scythe]

I love how the recent threads view has this post listed as "Windows 7 is pissing me..." :)

[Lithium Flower]

I believe there were some issues regarding an inability to come out of sleep state related to ATI drivers, I had the issue too on my Win 7 install with an ATI 4850, not as bad as yours but a few times the PC wouldn't wake up from Sleep Mode and needed a cold reboot, but I upgraded to the latest Catalyst version and haven't had the problem repeat. Maybe you could try looking into that?

[Serapth]

Actually, I think I have a solution.

Dell released a new bios. So, it was one of those behind the scenes things. Apparently there is another problem in that my i7 proc is being throttled because they shipped a 95W powersupply.

Oh dell, how I am growing to hate you more and more.

[roboninja]

One trick I have heard for Dell support; choose French, not English. You will then get a Canadian call centre, and can just speak English. I have heard this works.

[Doogie2K]

One trick I have heard for Dell support; choose French, not English. You will then get a Canadian call centre, and can just speak English. I have heard this works.

...or you'll get Vietnam. ;)

[BlackPete]

Buy a Mac.

[Shadowstorm]

Buy a Mac.

A little flame bait? Read the thread, this isn't a problem with Windows.