Windows 8.1 seems a lot more unstable than 7


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I have an Asus Sabertooth Mark II which are known to be conservative and stable motherboards.

 

I had BSOD with youtube apps in full screen which I attributed to an ATI 7850 at first. I purchased an nvidia 770 GTX and re-installed 8.1. Same problem?? I then updated the bios and turned off CSM compatibility support modules with full EFI.

 

I tried a 3rd time and this time received IE 11 crashes with flash .OCX constantly and then Windows Update become corrupted (Windows defender) in which a disk cleanup and Windows Fixit did not resolve this. I wondered if malware could have stopped this as the description was "changed how defender detects trojans"

 

All 3 times I kept going back to Windows 7 and not a single issue.

 

I am going back to Windows 7 and I fear going to 10 now. 

 

Anyone else notice this or do I have a buggy board or what else could be causing this issue? I find this odd and disturbing yet frustrating as Windows 8.1 boots so much faster with CSM off and pure EFI which I can't do with 7.

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general rule: if it works, don't change it.

 

i could tell you stories about myself, when years ago i had a perfectly fine working sys, but decided i need the latest (experimental!) bios for my sys. this was at a time when there usually wasn't a jumper-reset and taking the battery out for a moment did not work either. had to bring the pc to repair. never again.

 

also with linux now: earlier on i needed every update. if i was still that way, i would be using now 15.04 beta with kde plasma next. in the past i ended up installing and reinstalling distros so much and always had to reconfigure or find where the new settings were.  now i just keep the LTS releases and if i wanna try out something new i use virtualbox.

 

also winzip. i used to read a lot of pc magazines many years ago and nearly everytime winzip ended test winner, a higher version meant to me i needed it, blindly forgotting that all i was doing was put some files into zip. did not even care about the other functions.

 

so my advice: you are happy with win 7? keep it. read through many win8/10 threads and you are not the only one who thinks that way.

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general rule: if it works, don't change it.

 

i could tell you stories about myself, when years ago i had a perfectly fine working sys, but decided i need the latest (experimental!) bios for my sys. this was at a time when there usually wasn't a jumper-reset and taking the battery out for a moment did not work either. had to bring the pc to repair. never again.

 

also with linux now: earlier on i needed every update. if i was still that way, i would be using now 15.04 beta with kde plasma next. in the past i ended up installing and reinstalling distros so much and always had to reconfigure or find where the new settings were.  now i just keep the LTS releases and if i wanna try out something new i use virtualbox.

 

also winzip. i used to read a lot of pc magazines many years ago and nearly everytime winzip ended test winner, a higher version meant to me i needed it, blindly forgotting that all i was doing was put some files into zip. did not even care about the other functions.

 

so my advice: you are happy with win 7? keep it. read through many win8/10 threads and you are not the only one who thinks that way.

 

Sad too. But Windows 8.1 has been out for over a year and I own a luxury board. It is not like I am running the Windows 10 betas. Linux I left it in 2011 due to its cell phone UI and unstableness. Windows 7 was amazimg and finally a real version of Windows I fell in love with after .. well never I was a Windows hater before.

... 3 months later Metro came in alpha releases of 8. Cries 

 

But I find this unacceptable. I wondered if I have bad hardware or bios that was QAd with just 7? I also own a AMD phenom II which I retired last summer and used the parts for my current rig. That one I made the decision to stick with 7 as it was QA'd and designed for it via 2010. This machine should perform better i7 haswell x79 chipset with 8.1 than 7 and I see it in EFI already as it was made during 8's timeframe.

 

7 is aging and by next fall will be 6 years old. The time to move on is approaching and it is silly to use that on new hardware. XP users typically at least had old hardware after it was 6 or 7 years old.  

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Started out with an Asus P5K-VM motherboard, a Pentium-D processor, in-built Intel G33 video and 4GB DDR-800. Ran XP fine. Ran Vista fine.

^- conservative AND reliable -^ even after I had to replace a failed power supply.

Still, same mobo:

Put a PNY GT430 video card, added second monitor, and switched to a Q8200 processor. Ran 7 but had a lot of video driver restarts, but smoothed out and last I recall only had to reboot for Win7 patches.

Same mobo: ran 8 fine. Ran 8.1 fine. No issues at all. Sync'd well with the two tablets and WP8 we added to the network.

Same mobo: runs Win10TP fine.

So what's wrong with your computer?

Oh, wait... OCX are ActiveX extensions.

Any other computers on your LAN?

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Started out with an Asus P5K-VM motherboard, a Pentium-D processor, in-built Intel G33 video and 4GB DDR-800. Ran XP fine. Ran Vista fine.

^- conservative AND reliable -^ even after I had to replace a failed power supply.

Still, same mobo:

Put a PNY GT430 video card, added second monitor, and switched to a Q8200 processor. Ran 7 but had a lot of video driver restarts, but smoothed out and last I recall only had to reboot for Win7 patches.

Same mobo: ran 8 fine. Ran 8.1 fine. No issues at all. Sync'd well with the two tablets and WP8 we added to the network.

Same mobo: runs Win10TP fine.

So what's wrong with your computer?

Oh, wait... OCX are ActiveX extensions.

Any other computers on your LAN?

 

None.

 

Chrome crashed too. My guess is video acceleration had problems but with both ATi and Nvidia video cards. Could a bios setting like 4x vs 2x bus speed cause this? Why is it not impacted by 7? The defender error could be coincidence but nothing would clear that.

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But I find this unacceptable.

 

me too, me too. running the latest kubuntu 14.04.2 x64 and bought me an msi n750 gtx. the latest driver from nvidia, which was released only in 24th feb 2k15, has a big incompatibility with KDE. whenever going back from standby or hibernation, all i see is a black screen with mouse cursor, sometimes the screen flickers.

it's a known bug since version 331 or so which was released according to nvidia hp at 4th july 2014. many postings about that in the nvidia developers forums.

 

and i think it's just not tolerable to work without basic functions like hibernation and standy i need them daily. still no fix and no one really knows when there will be one.

gladly, since this is linux and open source, so lots of documentations online, i found a workarround, made my 2 script files, gave them with a nice icon in the systray and this works for now. (i know that's a workarround and the bug is still there)

 

i never felt for these stickers on notebooks or pcs claiming "designed for win xp, vista, 7 or whatever...." had 2 notebooks that came with winxp and ran vista ultimate edition with all aero gimmicks enabled just fine.

as i left windows world before 7 went into final i can't really say anything about this, however i brought back a notebook from my uncle from preinstalled win 8 which he hated for it's interface, to win 7 after fiddling with uefi mode in the bios.

 

what i think is that there might be a little bit too much hardware and possible combos out there to cover any case and some people therefore will end up with a system not 100% compatible to everything. this is also one of the reasons why apple is so successfull. not only they have style, but when i was working in a kind of apple store for half a year most argument was brought that "i just buy it  and it works."

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For me, Windows 8.1 runs fine on UEFI, Windows Defender, IE11, and all latest bios and drivers.  I mess with youtube all the time, play games, watch videos, metro apps, remote desktop, vmware, and crashes are extremely rare (maybe annual?).  

 

Your issues could stem from motherboard, bios settings, driver issues, software conflicts, IE extensions or malware.  I would reset the bios settings to default before a fresh install.  Unfortunately, these kinds of issues are hard to narrow down in a forum post.

 

One thing I wonder is if it's always one website or app that usually causes the crash, or does it happen no matter what sites you're on?

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<snip>

First you say you left Linux for being unstable and now you say Windows 8.1 is unstable. I won't find much credibility in the rest of what you've posted in this topic. Apologies.

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