System Service Exception

[Robert W.]

Against the advice of all of my colleagues, I am trying to install Vista on a
new computer I've assembled. Every single component is supposedly
Vista-compatible (in fact, I just upgraded to a $200 video card so Vista
would run).

But I cannot get past the blue screen of death during the "Expanding Files"
stage of installation. Soon after it reaches 1% I get a "System Service
Exception" and there's a hexidecimal code below that ends in "3B".

I can provide the specs of all the hardware in my system if required.

What would you do, short of giving up and just installing XP?

Sincerely,

Robert Werner
Vancouver, BC

[oh great moron]

If everything is supposed to be Vista compatible, verify that the media is
clean. Make sure that there are no smudges on it. As silly as it sounds, I
had that happen once.

What hardware do you have? You said it supposedly compatible. Did you
verify on the vendor's site? How about Microsoft site?

[Mark L. Ferguson]

No harm in running this:
Windows Vista: Upgrade Advisor:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pro...deadvisor.mspx

[Robert W.]

Gents,

I could explicitly gather and list all the hardware info on here though I
think it's a moot point because each item is regarded as Vista compatible.

Mark's idea is an interesting one. I couldn't run it before because I was
installing Vista freshly onto the hard drive (with no previous OS).

But I have now installed XP (and successfully may I add) so I guess it would
be quite simple to run the Vista adviser from the computer itself.

[Robert W.]

I've now successfully installed XP on the computer and loaded all the updates
so that I could install the Upgrade Advisor.

I just ran it. Everything passed fine though it said that it had no
information for:

* Intel ICH9 Family SMBus Controller - 2930
* Realtek High Definition Audio

Something REALLY strange is happening though. When I try to select the text
in the Upgrade Advisor I sometimes get the blue screen of death!!! Keep in
mind that this is within XP!! It didn't happen every time but did occur 3
times. I tried doing the same thing in several other applications but
couldn't get it to occur!

This got me wondering if perhaps Vista and the Vista Upgrade Advisor are
triggering something that's causing the fault. Might that be possible?

Anyhow, here's the report from the Upgrade Advisor:
http://mwtech.com/downloads/public/U...orTaskList.mht

To help track down the problem I installed and ran all the tests with
Everest Home Edition. Here are the results:
http://mwtech.com/downloads/public/E...FullReport.htm

Can anyone see anything wrong?

[Robert W.]

I build software for a living. When the users of my software say they've
encountered a bug, it helps a great deal if they can duplicate the problem
over & over through a clear set of steps.

I've discovered a very simple way to cause the computer to crash each &
every time in XP.

To try to narrow down the problem, I removed 2 of the 4GB of RAM, leaving 2
x 1GB Dimms.

Here's the quickest recipe to crash the computer:

1. Open up Google Maps (in order to use up some memory).

2. Copy about 50 mp3 files (2 to 5 MB each) from one drive to another.

The computer crashed about 90% of the time. A blue screen appeared but it
was too quick to read what it was saying.

I also swapped the 2 x 1GB Dimms out for the other pair. Same problem.
That tells me that either both sets of RAM are flawed or the problem lies
elsewhere.

Hoping this might flag someone as to what's going wrong here,

[DJS73]

Have the same problem: Intel SMBus Controller - 2930. Have you found any
reason why this "have no information for--" is reporting on the vista update
advisor. Have been looking for some time with no success. Thank-you

[Robert W.]

I did get Vista 64-bit working perfectly on my system and I [now] LOVE it!!!
There were 2 problems that were preventing me from installing and using it:

1. I had to explicitly increase the voltage going to my RAM. This was done
on one of the BIOS screens. On my system, everything works fine if the RAM
has +0.2 or +0.3 Volts. But anything less or more than this and the computer
won't function.

2. When installing Vista, you can't have more than 3 GB of RAM. So you need
to remove the excess amount. Then, after it's installed you run a special
patch from Microsoft to allow it to run with more RAM:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/929777

Indeed, these are some strange steps required to run an OS but they did
solve the entire problem for me.