Which Software Programs Hang Most Often on Your Windows Vista Computer ?

Well, Firefox 3 Beta 5 causes my computer to go wild from time to time (it starts using 100% CPU)…

Firefox 2.x crashes on my XP a few times per day. Not sure if this is caused by numerous extensions of Firefox itself.

I have been using Vista and never faced such issues.
Maximum memory is used by IE, FF and Acrobat reader tho.

For me its IE7. I don’t know what can I do about it :(.

Have been yelling at people since a long time ….. FF is nothing but overhyped BUZZ ….. stealing features from Opera ….. It only good for those olugins and is a HUGE memory hogg .

Switch to Opera , get to know its advanced tools (Mouse Gestures) and Surf Smarter .

—-udkl—> Opera Browser Lover

I got bugged up lot times with the firefox crash and some compatability issues with other applications and switched back to XP now.

Firefox 3 beta 3/4/5 crashes frequently on Vista… :(

I am facing the same problem…. the screen freezes frequently and it does not allow me to do anything but restart my notebook…. guess this is due to FF 3.0… I’ll try Opera now to check whether FF is the problem or it is something else… I am also not happy with Vista also, that may be one of the reasons….

I think it was Spybot that was creating problems, I guess it plays with the registry too often….I have disabled it but I am yet to reach a conclusion…

Boy, this post hit the nail on the head. I am running Vista Ultimate and constantly Outlook is crashing or “not responding”. I do have Google IMAP setup. I will remove it and see if it fixes the problem. I am also running Firefox 3 and the majority of the time when I close it, it crashes. Vista: what a f***in’ pain!

It’s been 2 days since i have started experiencing this not responding issue which is coming up now on every application i am trying to use - my laptop n vista is about a year old only and it wuz perfectly fine until 2 days back where i couldnt GOM player kept hanging - i thought it had something to do withthat - but then today my media player hanged, my google talk hanged so many times,and jet audio , i dunno what’s wrong - please help!!

hi,
i have bee using Vista Home Premium for last 18 months and all was well till last few weeks. The problem started as follows.
Google talk would hang the OS while voice calls. I tried to reinstall te drivers, i also attempted clean reinstall of Home Premium, but problem still existed. Yesterday i installed a clean Vista Business. Thought may b this would help but it didnt.
Before hanging CPU usage by Google talk falls to 0%. If i dont plug in the mic and speaker but jus listen using laptop speaker it works fine.
I tested my mic with sound recorder it works fine. also the external speakers work good.
Could this be an issue with my sound card or some other hardware issue?
Guys i dont know whats causing these issues. Please help !!!

As an experienced IT Professional, I am disturbed at what I read here. This is all very highly opinionated, and often unsupported. Please see below for examples:

Regarding Firefox: I have been using Vista on two desktops, and a laptop, for as long as it has been out of Beta. Talking pre-SP1 here. Even with FF 3, i have experienced zero problems. I mean none. Period.

Regarding Google Talk: Its locking up on voice calls. Yahoo Messenger did the same to me over the holidays, except during webcam sessions with family. Try adding more RAM before you go blaming on application for your problems. While no worse than XP, Vista is much more memory intensive. Try 3 - 4GB RAM with a dual core processor. If you are not running such specs, please quit blaming Vista for all of your issues, when it is your hardware, and not the software, that is at fault.

Regarding Spybot: I use this app on all of my computers. I have three. Never have I experienced a problem with it, not on 2000, XP, or Vista. Again, check the features; check your memory. Do not add browser plugins for apps like spybot; in helping to keep you secure, it does slow down browsing - its a tradeoff, and any link/web scanner that helps make browsing safer will do the same.

And lastly, as for FF “stealing” features from Opera, please, straighten out your facts. Firefox has been around quite some time, now–at least since Netscape opened their source code for their browser, leading to the Firefox project. Where was Opera then?

It disturbs me that, 1. Any site would allow such misinformed, accusatory discussion on its boards, without ample, or even halfhearted, support, and 2. That anyone would want to read, or take seriously, such commentary.

Please, check your facts, check your hardware specs, and then troubleshoot something for once. But stop throwing around blame.

Well Triratna, I too am an experienced software engineer and I am experiencing the same “Not Responding” problem as the others have described. I have been scouring the internet for hours looking for solutions and have found nothing apart from the blindingly obvious advice such as disabling checking plugins, updating drivers, checking for hardware issues. I have also tried disabling auto-tuning as some pages have suggested but the problem remains. This really is a problem and just because you haven’t seem it on the systems you use does not mean that it does not exist and everyone else must just be stupid.

Anyway, I am running a Medion laptop with 2.0GHz dual-core, 3GB RAM and with very little extra software installed. All of my drivers are up to date, Vista (x86) is up to date and so is Firefox.

The symptoms are that you are happily browsing and half way through loading a page (in either Firefox or Explorer) Vista gives you a blue circle and hangs for 10-15 seconds. This is not the pointer+blue circle which tells you that a page is loading, but a full blue circle. Firefox (or IE) then goes to “Not Responsing” along with any Explorer windows that are open but everything recovers when Vista comes back. Sometime Firefox will go milky white while this happens. Reviewing the task manager graphs after this has occured shows that during the problem, CPU is not overloaded in the slightest (~3%), there is plenty of free memory and no swapping appears to have taken place. Another point, when the system freezes, ctrl-alt-delete does not do anything and will not open the Task Manager, it needs to be opened before hand.

A reboot clears the problem for a short time but it comes back soon enough. I have monitored CPU temperature and performed stress testing with Prime 95 on both memory and the CPU.

I currently suspect that the issue is related Windows network sharing over a WLAN connection. Whenever I try to access a network share I get the same 10-15 second freeze with the blue circle. I suspect that Vista is trying to refresh these connections in the background (even though none of them are mapped to a drive). I often catch the Explorer half way through that silly green bar update when the problem occurs.

If anyone actually finds out what this is I would be very grateful if you could get back to us here.

My heartfelt advice to the world is: It is a mistake to attempt to run Outlook 2007 on Vista. Ever. Otherwise, Vista is actually working pretty well for me. And on XP, Office 2007 as a whole runs fine.

Outlook 2007 routinely hangs on Vista on multiple machines, from multiple manufacturers, in multiple network configurations, with and without all sorts of other software, and even with everything else disabled, with every Windows Update, with SP1, while connecting to an known reliable hosted Exchange Server over HTTP. Often it locks up while sending email, particularly with an attachment. A large PST is not the issue. I disabled every single add-in or service that is not essential. I don’t have any weird third party stuff installed (just Adobe Reader, Flash, etc. and some Microsoft apps.) I’m just using cached Exchange mode with a modest size mailbox on a fresh Vista install. It’s pretty much a base configuration, and it flat out does not work a large percentage of the time.

Vista acquired a bad reputation early on for instability due to device driver issues, but these are not to blame in my case. Nothing else is to blame. I’ve spent weeks eliminating other possibilities, months if you count my previous attempts. The combination that does not work reliably is Outlook 2007 on Vista. I need Windows and I need Outlook the real app (not Web access) so I am down to these choices:

1. Uninstall Outlook 2007 and install Outlook 2003 (or attempt to install 2003 and 2007 side by side, which sounds risky.) That’s probably the easiest thing so I’ll try that first. It’d be a shame to lose the categorization and other nifty Outlook 2007 features, but at least I’d avoid having to reinstall the OS.

2. Uninstall Vista and install Outlook on XP or the Windows 7 beta. Outlook works great on XP, but going back to that would be kind of a bummer.

The problems I’ve experienced are apparently common, based on all the searching I’ve done. In theory, Microsoft ought to have a giant list of submitted errors to help track this down, but it has been unreliable for me for a year and a half now, through every service pack and Windows update, even with brand new top-line hardware with 4GB of RAM. My next attempt, based on all the stellar comments in the blogosphere, is to use the Windows 7 beta as my main work machine, with XP as a fallback. I actually think the Windows 7 beta might be more stable for me than Vista SP1. It almost couldn’t be worse.

But what I have determined for sure is that it is a mistake to try and run Outlook 2007 on Vista. It just does not work and I am now done trying.

Hello, I have VISTA premium SP1 preinstalled on my AMILO FUJITSU/SIEMENS. 4GB en 32 bit systeem. I have many times
IE, WORD, POWERPOINT , EXEL hanging. The screen becomes white, and messages, Program no more reaction.Possible answer is stopping the program of wait for answer.
PERFMON/REL gives a stability of 2, ( was started after installation on 8).
No hardware of windows error on output from PERFMON/REL.
Is downgrade to XP a solution,and who pays the downgrade?
Much thanks.

Vista and outlook 2007 just would not work for me so I reverted to the complete office 2003. It was fine for a couple of months now it’s hanging and refusing to send email.