Anilrgowda

My customer JUST (this week) bought new Vista PC with 2 GB memory from Best Buy, brand unknown (but it is a brand name). Best Buy added P-cillin Virus Protection (from TrendMicro) and an unknown Anti-spyware product. Cost without added HW of any kind and also without any SW (except possiblly the security SW) was $800 so CPU speed(unknown) is probably not mininimum/ It probably has a decent but possibly below average cpu by today's standards..

Best Buy (i.e the Geek Squad) came to his house and set it up (which for our purposes means installed the printer driver).

Immediately after they left, my customer found the new PC to be intermittently slow and freezing. INTERMITTENT MEANS NOT FREQUENT. INTERMITTENT MEANS NOT EVERY 5 MINUTES. But from time to time he observes when using the internet
(1) downloads do not start OR start and only 1/3 of the download completes YET there is no error to that effect. Meanwhile another Windows XP PC in the house on the same router and ISP has no problem doing the EXACT same download quickly. Example. In 8 hours he could only PARTIALLY download his Blackberry SW while his wife's WIn XP PC did it quickly (and then he moved it over (somehow, does not matter) and installed it and it works with his Blackberry and his Vista PC). ISP is RCN (cable modem supplying DSL or similar, DHCP, not PPPoE).

(2) When sending and receiving MS Outlook email (Office 2003) the PC is slow and sometimes freezes (I don't know if the whole PC or just Outlook) and sometimes emails do not get downloaded or sent and often they do. REMEMBER THIS IS NOT EVERY 5 MINUTES., this is occasional during the day. Now maybe Office 2007 would have been a better choice but Office 2003 **IS** on the MS Vista compatibility list so problems this serious should not be expected. (My customer had a Office 2003 CD that would Activate so this saved him the cost of buying Office 2007).

BEST BUY REFUSES TO PROVIDE HELP OF ANY KIND. So say nothing about that in your reply.

Obviously ALL Windows Vista PCs do not act like this or MS would not have released it. Maybe Office 2007 works better with Vista but that does NOT explain the download problem and furthermore, as already mentioned, MS says Office 2003 is compatible with Vista so.....

So my question is, DO **SOME** WINDOWS VISTA PCS EXHIBIT THESE PROBLEMS., i.e. IS THIS A **KNOWN** PROBLEM IN THE VISTA COMMUNITY as the product is not stable yet and "Microsoft is working to fix this"
OR
IS IT SOMETHING OTHER THAN THE ABOVE THEORY.

If you think it is the later, I frankly can't imagine what it could be. Virus or Spyware on a brand new PC with SW installed by Best Buy and setup by the Geek Squad????? I HAVE A LOT OF TROUBLE BELIEVING THAT. Also, P-cillin may have a firewall but, in my experience, firewall related problems are NO INTERNET ACCESS AT ALL or NO internet access to CERTAIN web-sites, not all web sites. That does not correspond to the above symptoms. If you disagree, please say so,

Whether PC is slow at non-internet related tasks (ex. MS Word), I do not know.

My main interest is a reply from an EE expert who has ACTUALLY SEEN THE PROBLEM and provides a solution OR a link to the same thing.

My 2nd choice is information that will be useful in helping me solve the problem BUT note that is my 2nd choice; my job is to fix the problem.

Please note that this is NOT my PC, I will be at the customer site later this (today) afternoon so the following reply is NOT HELPFUL. "Check these two things, post the results here, and THEN I will reply."

I request replies based ONLY on what is above, no more information; this is everything my customer told me on the phone.

Anilrgowda

Currently sat working now on My Vista PC which did have some similar issues to the ones you have described.

Whe on the internet especialy whilst running downloads or sites with a lot of flash animation, videos etc it would lock up completely. Also copying or downloading large files did seem to be a problem as well.

I think I have it sorted now but did have to make a few changes.

1. Put in a brand new GraphicsCard. The motherboard came bundled with a PCI-e graphics card of its own brand which was Vista certified (acording to the box) but changing that for a ahlf descent ATI card seemed toget rid of the locking up whils on the net.

2. Copying / dowloading files (and sometimes just for no reason at all) PC seemed to stop responding with HDD light stuck on. Tried a few things and in the end it came down to a dodgy PSU. Fitted a new one and here I am surfing the net again.

I know these are not exactly the same issues as your customer but they may help.