XXHighEnd

Hi Boleary,

Sorry for late reply about my problem with Vista. I don't have any problem installing Vista and W7 in the same PC. But I am using 2 HDDs , one for Vista and another for W7. I tested both OS by running common applications inclusing PowerDVD without problem. XXHE works on W7. But on Vista, I could start it but when I hit "play" button, XXHE stop responding. It took about 3-5 minutes for my PC to come back to normal operation and said XXHE failed to run. I had problem with "change WP" (wall paper) too and Peter suggested that I disabled all the WP options. I did but still XX did not run after hitting the play button.

I don't know what I did wrong since I installed XX the same way I did on W7. I did reinstall three times and did not work.

I will re-install Vista and set it to lite instalment and see what happen.

thanks for the advise on RAMDISK anyway.
Too bad that I have never heard XX on Vista so far.

Cheers!
Praphan

Praphan,

Try to isolate the album you use for "testing" this. Make a new root folder somewhere, call that "Music". Under that create a folder "TestAlbums". Under that create a sub folder with the name of the artist. Under that crate a subfolder with the title of the album.
Now in XX set the Music Root to C:\Music\ (C: assumed). Quit XX and restart.

Now go to the Gallery Area, and select that one album for playback.
I think this will now work ...

If so indeed, there must me something wrong with your album structure, and ChangeWP can't deal with it. This is a kind of "bug" by itself and solved for 0.9z-3, but anyway, it is incurred for by the (wrongish) structure.
So let me know whether this now works.

In the mean time you may have TaskManager running, and after pressing Play you may see ChangeWP being there consuming a lot of CPU. If so, just kill it.

In either case let me know what happens, and DO NOT reinstall Vista. It is unrelated.
Peter

Hi Peter,

Thank you for the advise.

I am not quite sure if my problem is related to wall paper. I followed your guide by reorganizing the music file  structure as suggested. The test did not work smoothly. I can sometime get the music playing randomly though but have to wait for XX which was not responding for 4 munites.  Here is a summary of my step by step actions:

1. I booted Vista. Then do nothing but started XX. Then I could change all the settings on XX without problem.  Then I added album in the playlist by clicking the library botton as I usually did on W7 platform.

2. Then click play button. XX went into "not responding" mode and the PC went unresponsive. Cannot launch any other applications even the explorer while XX was not responding. Not even launch the task manager.

3. After waiting for 3-4 minutes, sometime I could get the sound up for one minute and then the PC went halt again. But this was random. Sometime I would not hear any sound at all. The clock did not run.

4. If I have a patient then I will wait longer say another 5 minutes and I got the dialogue box saying XXEngine3.exe has stop working . Sometime I got the message saying the host process for windows service stop working as well. But the messages were random. Not getting this all the times. Then PC came back to working condition again. But one thing for sure is that XX stop running after I hit play again

5. If no patient , then I have to do hard reboot and the PC will bring me back to normal Vista window and the same problem again when I hit play button in XX.

6. At some point,  I just wait and wait for XX to come back from unresponsive mode and then close the XX and start it again. Now this time, I just uninstalled the Window Security Essential which is basically a free virus and internet security software.  Then I added the song to the playlist by dragging each song from the library area on the left side of the GUI to the play list. Then BINGO I was lucky to get XX running continueosly. Wow !!!!  Sound beautiful!  The reason why I uninstalled security Essential was that i got the malware thing running when I checked the task manager history. So I thought it might be the MS security that caused the problem

7. I shutdown the PC and restarted the system again to see how XX behave.  Oh no. Lots of problem messages coming up. But when I started XX, it worked.  :)  While running XX a message coming up saying Task Scheduler Engine has stopped  working. And then a message saying Host Process for Windows services stopped working and was closed. I did not care as long as I hear the beautiful sound and enjoying music.

8. Test shutting down the PC and restart again . Now XX run smoother. But with some window error message like Spooler subsysgtem appl stopped working and was closed.



I am not quite sure what caused all these trouble but I guess  should be the security software.  :( When I have time tonite I will reinstall the Microsoft security Essential and see what happen.


But for now, I agreed that overall sound quality of XX on vista is better than on W7. No glicthes at all for me since I use Sennheiser HD 650 for the SQ test via Berkeley Alpha DAC. I hear no glitches. Sound more liquid and more natural.

I am happy now. But have to strukkle to get my system running smoother.  Any further suggestion?

I will come back again to report if MS Security Essential is causing the trouble.

Regards,
Praphan

Wow, that is some report Praphan.

Ok, it never occurred before (but I suspect (I think it was) crisnee to have had the same), but the "stalling" thing must be about the virus checker. I guess it checks the large music files going into memory, and takes ages to to it. This will be a matter of settings in the virus program, or otherwise don't use it (they're all lousy IMO, and I never use one).

Next I have been waiting for the first one to come up with those "has stopped working" messages. So, for you this is unknown (as it will to many), but this is just Vista, and those processes not getting enough time slices, so they quit. Isn't that nice ? It's always harmless as far as I have found.
Also, the registry tweaks (about the priority levels etc., from Nick) greatly "help" this (as I noticed), but it's really no problem.
You may do a search for it, and you will find dozens and dozens of people reporting it, but it was all from the past and Vista ... and WASAPI, which arranges those things internally ... as I think.

All 'n all you're good to go, and very nice you found the problem (yourself :)).
Peter

Hi Peter,

Just to drop you a few lines to report on update of my system.

1. MS Security Essentials interfered XXHE. Uninstalled it.
2. My registry was all messed up after using registry application to clean it. DON'T USE THIS KIND OF TOOL.
3. Ending up reinstall Vista and update the motherboard Bios
4. Don't install any drivers that I don't need.
5. I run Vista only at the moment.

The system is stable now. No more annoying "....... stopped working".

Next project for me is to set up RAMDISK.

thanks and regards,
Praphan

Hi Praphan,

I had a problem with installation and it had to do with Microsoft Security Essentials and an unknown device driver combination. I'm still not sure exactly what caused what but Security Essentials was part of it. The weird thing was that I'd uninstalled it and continued to get problems but to a slightly lesser extent. It turns out even though uninstalled there was still a related anti-malware service running. When I got rid of that and finally figured out the device problem everything cleared up.

So check services for a Msft Essentials anti-malware service and disable it if it's still there.

Chris

Hi Chris,

Thanks for sharing your experience with me on installation of XXHE on Vista.

Mine is the weirdest thing I have ever encountered. Here is the story:

After I posted my report saying that my system was running smooth after reinstalling Vista with minimal drivers, I have had problem again after two days. Same old random all kind of services "....... stopped running" ranging from graphic card controller service to Exploror. This caused XXHE stopped running as well. Even worse, it could sometimes lead to 'blue screen'.   What I usually did is to run 'system recovery' to go back to a point where I am sure that the system used to run smooth. Then I could run it smooth again. I tried loading XXHE, internet Explorer, CD ripping application and DVD player all at the same time. The system could handle all these applications smoothly.  :)  During the test, I even tried shut down the PC and then rebooted to run all these applications again. It worked fine. Then shutting the PC down at night.

The weird thing is that after I rebooted again in the morning. These kind of ' service...... stopped working' came back and haunted me again like a ghost.  :( I have been fighting with this ghost for a while. Sometime even with reinstallation of Vista. Peter said it is unrelated but reinstallation is like working from a clean sheet of paper as I am not good at managing the PC.

Some of the PC guru at my office suggested that I had a virus problem., some even said that I should have hardware defect.

What did I do wrong?

Help please.

Thanks in advance.
Praphan

PS. I had XXHE installled on another computer runnning W7 without any problem at all.

Praphan - I still claim this is all normal, although it shouldn't go as far as something shutting down causes XX to die (and I never heard of *that* as consistent behaviour).

What you can do to prevent this, or minimalize it :

- Lowering your Thread Priority;
- Highering Q1;
- Highering the buffer of your device.

Again : This is just Vista, and the playback engine (XXEngine3.exe) is demanding so much from the system, that services are shutdown (or they do that themselves) because thay can't respond hence don't get the time they need.

Of course this is related to the processing power of the system itself; the less it has of it, the more this will happen.

*When* this happens (a service shuts down) it very well can happen that the sound is distorted until you click away the "Has stopped working" screen from the service in question. I think I remember that even Engine3 can die because of such a message, but I certainly do *not* recall that it won't play again. And, once the service (etc.) has gone, it won't come back automaically for that (boot) session, so you are done with it. Unless ... unless you imply the restart of it (I think I have seen this, but I don't recall which one that was).

Now, after you have seen me writing this (once more), maybe you can deal better with it (mentality).
Peter


PS: I can imagine that if you undo the priority tweaks from Nick (repeated by Marcin in his own topic), this helps too. But remember, it's just a good thing ! (those services shutting down)

Praphan,

What all is connected to your pc when you boot it? USB devices in particular. The PC I had trouble with has problems when it encounters certain usb devices at startup. Even now this pc refuses to do anything at all, it doesn't even get to load bios option when I have a particular usb hub connected. It will just sit there, stopped dead, no error, no nothing. I'll have to hard boot and make sure the device is disconnected. Once the system is up I can connect the device and no problem.

Also, another thing. This is hard to believe but on my system it works. After getting the blue screen, if I do a shutdown and reboot, enter the bios and don't change anything but hit save anyway, I can get back into Vista no problem. How did I figure this out, by observation and luck. Still can't believe it, makes no sense at all. (All this is unrelated to XX by the way) Just quirky problems I've encountered recently which may have been exacerbated/accentuated by the problems I had with XX.

Contrary to what anyone says, I would just try to get the system back to what it was before you installed XX. and then look for anything unusual, anything not working quite right before XX is even on there. If after a while everything is and stays normal then I'd install XX in its most simple way and work from there very slowly with any changes to your system (services etc.) and XX changes testing every step of the way. Boring, but....

Also check your sleep and hibernation settings they can cause problems, the hibernation file in particular if it is corrupted, it did for me.

Good luck and ask me anything you like. I know what you're going through. My stuff with this pc was so bizarre it would take much to long to enumerate all that happened to it in the last month or so. By the way, make sure you don't have that anti-malware service running inadvertently.

Remember after a blue screen or boot problem to try the bios trick, who knows it might work for you too.  :wacko:

Chris

Great Chris. Thanks.

Also to keep in mind :

A device which theoretically can be booted from (including SD etc. cards) can generate a bulk of interrupts during booting that it looks like it won't happen at all. But it will, and only takes an hour or so.
I'm not sure anymore how I found this out; probably by watching the light which is in such a reader.
A USB stick (device) could show the same ...

1c
Peter

Praphan,

One more thing. You might consider (if you have the space on the computer, and the inclination) to install a separate OS just for XX. For instance I installed Windows Server 2008 sp1 (not the newer version). You can download it from Microsoft and try it free for at least 6 months. I've installed it, stripped it down, don't use it for anything but music, no internet, standard vga etc. Barebones and I'm having no problems. (This is on the same quirky pc which doesn't boot with the usb device connected and doesn't under this OS either as it never gets to that point). By the way, there was absolutely no detectable hd activity or flashing lights of any kind on anything while the pc was just sitting there.

The one problem with the W2008 thing is eventually, if you like it, you'll have to buy it. I can't even find out how much it would be for an activation key. True I haven't tried very hard, but it's confusing and might be expensive. A definite opt out for me. By the way W2008 is basically a version of Vista, only very basic in terms of everyday OS use, and heavy on networking stuff. So if you disable all the networking you've got a very light basic system. Not exactly what it was meant for, but seemingly effective.

If you do go the W2008 route ask me for a few tricks or tips before you install it. They might save you some time, they certainly would have helped me out.

Chris

By now : Installing Win2008 info (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1423.0).

Hi Christ and Peter,

First of all, thanks so much for the advise. It has been a privilege for me to be part of this community. I consider myself as a novice but never feel alone. There is always a helping hand when needed.

I am quite busy this week and will follow your advice over the weekend. However, I can add more information about my problem as follows:

1. These ".... stop working" things are fatal for my case. It did not only cause XX to shut dead but sometime led to blue screen. I usually fixed the system by using recovery tool to bring the system back to the point where I had no problem. Sometime it was not recoverable and then required reinstalltation of OS.  Well Christ , this BIOS trick is very interesting. If I encountered another blue screen I will give it a try.

2. I don't have any USB device hooked to the system. My PC consisted of

Gigabyte 880 GA UD3H mother board
AMD X4 965 quad core processor
ATI HD 5770 graphic card
Lynx Studio AES 16  , Sub D connector broken out into AES/EBU output.
OCZ Vertex 2 60 GB SSD
One 1TB HHD, one 2TB HHD
Corsair DDR 3 , 4 GB RAM

3. I am sure that the system is not infected since I used the anti virus and malware to scan all the  HDDs.

4. I ran dual OS, W7 on HDD and Vista on SSD. Strange enough, these ghosts were 'contagious' across OS. To elaborate, when I encountered the problem on Vista, I rebooted and  switched to W7 which was shutted down properly and faced no problem prior to shutting down. Once  booted on W7, these ghosts jumped on to W7. Doesn't make any sense to me but it happened.  FYI, XX was not installed on W7 as I intended to use W7 environment purely for HD movie application. Vista was dedicated solely for XXHE.

After these ".....stop service" ghosts haunted me badly two days ago, then I decided to start from a clean sheet of paper ie reformating the two OS disks, pull out the SATA cable for the data disk.  Then reinstalling W7 on SSD. Then loading drivers for motherboard, Lynx card and graphic card. New problem arose. Black screen with hard disk LED blinking forever. After rebooting, same problem. Then I decided to reinstall the driver one by one and found out that the cause of deadly black screen came from ATI graphic card driver. So I am now running the system on a standard VGA adapter. This  is very strange again since I don't have any problem with ATI driver earlier on this PC. Is the graphic card failed ? Should not be since the monitor still connected HD 5770 card but running as a standard VGA.

Last  night I ran memtest. Today I put the CPU on stress test for 14 hours using Prime95. All passed. But these tools did not test the graphic card. So I still doubt if my graphic card failed or it is due to driver conflict. Definitely, now it is not related to XX as I started from a clean sheet of paper without installing XX on the system.

Well this is where I am now.

Next step for me is to remove the graphic card from the motherboard. Hook the monitor  to the onboard DVI connector. Then install XX and see what happen.

I will report back soon.

Thanks so much for the help again.

Cheers!

Praphan

Praphan, what a time this must have taken you all. And next still happily write aout it. Phew.

Ok, I only noticed this from your earlier post :


It may all be a coincidence, but a. this may have been the time that indeed something broke down in your graphics card and b. most likely the OS will have jumped to another (more generic) driver; could be right away, could be at a next reboot, could be because you had to force your way through it (what about no monitor). And lastly (or next) chances would be fair that you installed a different driver for your graphics card opposed to how it ever was (how many nVidia drivers exist ? how few really work well ? <- just en example).

And for the remainder ... you're on your own. Hahaha.
Jut kidding.

But do I understand it correctly that you also saw the "stopped working" services on W7 ? ... That would be a new one (for me).

All the best,
Peter

Hi Peter,

How can I be on my own when you reply to my post at the speed of light !

1. I am sure that I reinstalled the right graphic card driver since I saved it on the hard disk with clearly marked that it is for which OS.

2. As far as I remember, the "... stop service" issue started after I ran on Vista. I don't think I had ever encountered this issue on W7. But the point is that this ... stop working things got right into W7 environment even without XX installed in it.

3. The easiest way to test the graphic card is to remove it from this PC and stick it in my other PC. The trouble is that it requires too much work since I use water cooling blocks rather than conventional cooling fan units on both GPU and CPU.  Even if I find out that the card fails I cannot RMA anyway (return to manufacturer). I removed the fan and have the warranty voided. Well I can watch the HD movie  from on board VGA adapter though with acceptable decent video quality.

thanks
Praphan

BTW Peter, I have the privilege of obtaining the Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter and Web (x64) from my company.

Is this version good to go?
Thanks

No !!
That's the W7 version. :(
(unless you want that of course). You'll need R1 (if it is called like that), or just the first W2008. I'm not sure about service packs; maybe one exists, if it's only not leading to that R2 version.


Sorry for the maybe stupid question ... but is this just similar to Vista and e.g. the Spooler service "stopped working" - hence all kind of services shutting down which actually don't harm (apart from maybe those which do harm you) ?
... not that I can do anything with the answer, but it's just so strange ...
And is this without any "tweaking" to W7 ?

Peter

Hi again Praphan,

Your situation feels (not from logic just a sense) to be very similar to mine. There is however a little logic involved. Something is going on pre operating system and possibly pre almost everything, like right after the BIOS. That's how it can effect both OS's. Now what that could be, I don't know. But what seems possible (in terms of a thought experiment) is that the crashing of XX--or something else, affected some very odd little thing that happens at a very early stage of boot-up. It must be extremely early because in my case anyway I wouldn't even get an error beep, or to memory check, the computer just started and hung immediately. And the bios thing I mentioned (entering and exiting the bios and saving without making changes), what can that possibly do, and yet suddenly I could get on and everything was fine.

I say all this seemingly nonsensical stuff thinking more of my troubles than yours (but since yours "feel" very similar [they also revolve around XX, and only made their appearance after using XX, happen very early in the boot cycle, lead to blue screens and/or seemingly endless waits, not to mention that the problems you had with XX when it was working to some degree were also similar etc.) I even went through the same thoughts and updates re video card and drivers, audio drivers and searched the earth for the latest. Nothing helped, there were no apparent problems with any hardware.

By the way, if I connect that usb device I still can't boot, but I now know just to disconnect it and start over. It's also interesting that when I reboot in that situation I just have to brush the on/off button and it shuts off immediately, as if it's saying "what took you so long, clown." Usually when you shut the PC down you have to hold the button for a few seconds. Anyway, the problem was that before I'd figured out about the usb device and the anti-malware service part of Microsoft Security Essentials, things would interact (I assume) and the blue screen would show-up and I would have the same problems as you have with no clue as to what was happening. I just lucked into the BIOS cure because I was going there so often to try different settings.

With all this I'm kind of thinking out loud, and trying to give you as much info as possible. I keep going back to the thought that your computer is running into something unrecognized and is stumped in a sense. I was playing around with a different computer today, trying to find a way to convert the audio track of some DVD/DVD-As to just audio (flac or mp3) and while doing so, suddenly the DVD drive would disappear, or it would show just one file. in other words it suddenly became an unrecognized device, or partially incorrectly recognized. I'm thinking something like that happened to something on your system that screws things up when you try to re-boot and possibly also sends you to the blue screen when it interacts with something else.

So, I'd definitely try the bios thing, just to see. But if somewhere there's an unknown or unrecognized device (or your system thinks there is) that is hanging up your system.... and it's hidden. I'd try uninstalling every thing that has or should have a device driver, one at a time, or maybe better yet as many as you can at once and than reinstall one at a time.

Anyway, I wish you luck. I hope my rambling helps in some way. What a pain. Chris

Something I just very coincidentally ran into ...

First there's Nick's post here : http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1410.msg13703#msg13703
If you follow the link in there, there's a Next button in the top right corner. So I thought "what will that bring" and clicked it. This is what it brings : http://www.osronline.com/ddkx/ddtools/bootini_9b3n.htm.  An excerpt of it :

Establishes a port for EMS transmission. This statement appears in the boot loader section of the boot.ini file and applies to all boot entries on the computer.

This tells me that at least it is possible to impeed "a" setting to spread over several boots. Whether this updates all the boot.ini's or there's a general one somewhere (unlikely ?) I don't know, but if the latter, you might be stuck with it until you low-level format the disk.

And we DID apply such a command ... about DEP. (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1398.msg13494#msg13494)
Maybe that too spreads over OSes (to be born haha).

A cause or not, maybe good to keep in mind anyway.
Peter

From that same website :

Drivers developers and testers often have to add, delete, and change the parameters of boot entries to test their drivers under variable conditions. This section describes a few common scenarios and suggests strategies for configuring boot parameters in the boot.ini file and in NVRAM.

Non volatile RAM eh ... (but probably here the BIOS is referred to).

Hi Christ and Peter,

Thanks for your thoughts about my situation and advise.  Uhmmm... pretty technical for me but I will try to go back step by step to think about what went wrong.

One thing for sure now is that Lynx card is not  the cause of the  problem. I had it  removed from the mobo and the  stop working  thing still exists.    :) What a relief ! I can buy new mobo or graphic card to fix the issue , but not the Lynx card.

Tomorrow I will remove graphic card and use the onboard standard VGA to see what happen.  If it run without ... stop working.. or BSOD, then might be the graphic card driver conflict with XX.

For your information, I use 'driver sweeper' to totally clean drivers to make sure there is no left over whatsoever.

I will try to help myself as much as I can and report back soon.

Thank  you so much again.
Praphan

Problem with ATI HD5770 + W7 that crashes XX

Hi Christ and Peter,

Now I am ready to report back my situation. I finally have my issues fixed under W7 environment. I haven't had Vista reinstalled yet. My problem is not related to the Vista and change WP at all. But rather the compatibility problem between display driver and W7. It doesn't occur to all PC but some selected one for unknown reason and I was the unlucky one. I found this from the step recommended by you two. What had I done is quite simple but I would like to share my findings here so those who might have the same problem as mine can save time to fix it. Here you go:

1. As I mentioned in my last post, I have reinstalled W7 from scratch , then installed mobo, ATI HD 5770 , Lynx card drivers as well as flash BIOS with latest version. After rebooting, my PC went into BSOD.

2. Then I shoot back to the point where I haven't installed any drivers by using both unstallation tools under "control panel". But to make sure that these drivers were completely cleaned up, I used "driver sweeper" (freeware from Guru3D). Just a note for those who never use this sweeper, make sure that you reboot the system into fail safe mode (hit F8 right after system loading OS) then run driver sweep and check all the drivers that you want to remove then clean. In my case, I removed Lynx, ATI HD 5770 drivers.

3. As my BSOD jumps across OS, so Christ observation is right that there must be something wrong inherited in the boot.int file. How to clear this? I did a very simple dummy way. Just open the PC case, then remove battery on the mobo to reset BIOS (you can use jumper to short it as well). Note that I used to flash the BIOS. By doing this I brought mobo back to the default BIOS. This brought my PC back to the point as if I just finished installation of W7 on new hardware.

4.  Now reinstalling Lynx card driver first. Then shut down and turn on PC again. No problem. In my case, shut down =\ restart. Then instead of reinstalling the ATI display driver right away. I took time to google "ATI HD 5770 driver problem with Windows 7". Wow ! I am not alone. Tons of people having the same BSOD like me. The driver that has problem with W7 start from 10.3 to 10.9. The one that I always use is 10.9.

5. I was about to download ATI driver version 10.2 but luckily ATI just released a new 10.10 on that date. Release note implied driver conflict is resolved.

6. After installing ATI display driver version 10.10 and reboot, thanks god, system start normally. Then I went on to install all the applications that I need including XXHE. After 2 days test, the system has run smoothly and stably. A side note to user of ATI HD 5770, you should disable Catalyst AI (open CCC => Advance => Graphics => 3D => All => check "Disable Catalyst AI ).

My system is now pretty stable. Running XX , Power DVD, ripping CD and surfing the net all at the same time without problem.

My next action is to install Vista.

Peter, I have licences for both Vista Business 64bit and Windows Server 2008 64 bit. What do you recommend me to install?

Thanks,

Praphan

Who says you should ask questions to us ? We should be calling you !!
haha.
Man, good you solved it all, and what a good feeling it must give you (ok, in the end) that you did it yourself. Great.


Before I would have said go W2008 (not R2) - which I actually did, but regarding the post from Josef from today (Re: Installing Win2008 info (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1423.msg13751#msg13751)) ... I guess Josef is right. It *will* be more stable, but only because without doing something yourself it will be. With Vista you can reach the same (well, theoretically because you'd have to know what to "kill" in order to get to the (stripped) W2008 version).

Also don't underestimate the steep price for such a server version (I never realized this so much).

Btw, regarding Vista 64 bit, take care you get SP1 at least.

Regards now,
Peter

Hi Peter,

I would be happy to talk to you guys if you actually call me in Bangkok !   :) If you guys are happened to be here in this part of the world, I am happy to host a decent super spicy Thai lunch.  ;)  You will need to bring a fire extinguisher with you haha.

I still have some slight instability though. it happened after an overnight shut down (by physically swith off the power supply as well). With the first boot, ... services stop working randomly. Easily fixed by just *shuting down* the PC and press the power button to reboot again then the system will run normally. I must shut down not restart. I am still scratching my head for this. So weird !!

Yes I have Windows Server 2008 (I can get R2 though) which is Vista based. I got it free from my company. :veryhappy: On Vista 64bit, I also downloaded SP1 as well.

I guess I will go for the Server 2008 as it requires less work to strip it down to bare bone.

Thanks
Praphan

Hi Praphan,

Glad things are working better, although I bet you're still a bit worried about the services thing and what else might happen. I would be given the unexplained nature of the problems. The shutdown vs. reboot thing sounds eerily similar to the enter BIOS but don't make changes thing; it doesn't promote relaxed computing.

From what I've read here, if you're going Win2008 you should stick with the original sp1 version if you can. Good luck.

I love hot food by the way, the Mexican green chili heat in particular.

Chris

Hi Chris,

The ... service stop runnning things are harmless to me now. Just a jitter.

Thanks for your guide anyway. I owed you a lunch if you are coming to BKK. I have never tried Maxican chili myself but my children did. It is no where near the Thai small green/red chili called "Prik Kee Noo". It is too hot even for me.

Cheers!
Praphan