I’ve recently been whining about Vista blue-screening on me. Just after wiping it off the affected system, Tim Heuer from Microsoft offered to help me troubleshoot the problem. After re-installing and having another few blue-screens, I passed him the MEMORY.DMP files (~150 MB each via TransferBigFiles.com, a great free service). And guess what he found?
While Vista told me that the problem was with the video driver, it turns out that the problem was… my unsupported RAID driver from Intel. When I first had a blue-screen, it occurred to me that was the problem, but since Vista so confidently diagnosed the issue as a video driver issue, and since the RAID array has seemed to work perfectly (i.e., no data corruption), I stopped worrying about it.
Tim assures me the problem is with the RAID driver so… not only do I feel stupid for whining publicly about an instability caused by a RAID driver not designed for use with Vista, but I’m going to have to once again wipe off Vista and install a different OS since Intel makes it clear on their site my hardware is not supported under Vista.
Ugh.
Ben Galbraith 
Why did he have to wait until you blogged to tell you this? Vista uploads details of reasons for bluescreens to MS.
Maybe I won’t be using my discounted-vista any time soon….
Ricky: most likely because the auto uploaded stuff goes into some database or queue somewhere, and the team responsible for it is months behind checking any of that. Even if they do find something, they probably can’t contact you directly on it because they won’t have identifying info — its just so the vendor can improve their product.
Ben,
Love you slogon on your banner.
Are you sure that hasn’t been trademarked already by Vista? That is the main selling point for upgrading right? 😀
The ironic part for me is why beta test their Apple clone for them when I can just use the real thing?
I just wish Apple would let me install their OS on my PC. I wouldn’t even hold them to support it. I just want to delete what is currently there. 😉
I read an acrtile recently in business weekly that spoke of the expected increase in sales for the apple corporation. The acrtile suggested that this increase would take place for a few reasons. One of those reasons is that many personal computer owners have held onto their old pc’s running windows xp because they didn’t want to get a new computer with vista. Others may be coming in to get a new computer to get away from vista or to simply purchase the new windows 7. Either way, apple wants to capatlize on this expected influx of consumers and market specifically to draw those individuals to their products in the coming months.
x45mPq wahgzumrcwqe