Windows Vista Reliability Index: How Stable Is Your PC With Vista?

08 jul 2008

Windows Reliability and Performance Monitor is a useful utility inside Windows Vista that helps you analyze the performance of your Vista machine over time.

vista-reliability-index

You get to know about hardware devices and software programs that are creating problems on your system or causing the machine to shut down unexpectedly.

When my Vista machine was new, the reliability index was an impressive 8 but after four months of extensive use, the score has come down to 1.07. Maybe that’s because I extensively use applications that are still in early beta or even alpha stages.

So what is the reliability index* of your Vista machine ? Put that score in the form below and hit submit.

*To view your Vista Reliability Index, type perfmon in the Windows Run dialog. Next switch to the Reliability Monitor under Monitory Tools and note the score.

http://crueltobekind.org Nicole Simon

Nifty tool, did not know about it. Mine is 2.8 but the errors listed bringing that one down are in part due to my impatience (killing apps of instead of waiting for decent shut down) or areas I do not consider to be problematic at all.

For example I know that certain things make an error but still do them (like usb unplugging and such). :)
http://www.aboutonlinetips.com Chris

This is quite impressive and helpful tip. Well my score is 3.2.But how to increase the index ?
fr

Well if you had 8 in the beggining, that’s because you didn’t do a clean install. I started with 10, currently it goes from 9 to 10 but I must say I don’t do alfa or beta testing. You can use a VM for that purpose. Your chart is not complete, are you shuting down properly? I also don’t use XP software on Vista. I think Vista is more stable than XP, I like it better.
Mike

Wow! I’m impressed by my 9.04 score. Looks like I was running initially with a 10.0, but dropped when I finally found & installed audio drivers to get sound working on my Compaq. It’s slowly inched its way back up only dropping a couple of times due to crashes on our .NET based ticketing system.

And, I’m one of the few that hasn’t had issue with Vista. Granted, I haven’t torn in to it yet, but a fresh SP1 install with the necessary apps and things have been humming along nicely. Faster and more smoothly than when I was on XP.
http://elekhni.com Lekhni

Mine is 9.37! I am quite shocked.
http://bizztra.blogspot.com Bizztra

4.64…. :( Damn……
Chua

Mine is 6.93, but it hasn’t been working since May 2008! Does anybody know how to restart/reset/reinstall it?
Des

Post-install my system reported 10, but this dropped to 5.50 after a while, always steadily climbing back up again, but since April this year it has continued to climb and is now sitting at a healthy 9.66
I’m quite happy with my system as a whole, the only restarts I have to endure are following Windows updates.
The one complaint I do have is with regard to my Hauppague DVB receiver card; it never works after a Windows update and the only way to fix it is to uninstall the drivers, reboot and then download the drivers and reinstall. Not a huge problem, but a pain in the a$$. I’m assuming it may be related to my running Vista 64 bit?
andrew

Mine bounces between 2 and 5. It’s usually on the low end, since I do a lot of software development on my Vista box.

I see three to five “xxx.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close” dialog boxes in a typical day, nearly always due to one of my programs triggering the dreaded exception 0xC0000005: access violation, AKA use of bad pointer.
Rizwan

1.84 :S, It has been running for around 14 months with a lot of beta software installation, development tools beta… Seems like I have to have a fresh installation and use it sensible not wildly :P.

Thanks
Rizwan
tvanriper

Mine is 2.7. I’ve had less-than-stellar things to say about Vista, however I’ve recently install SP1, so perhaps it’ll behave a little better.

This said, I think my low score is as much because I debug programs that I am building, and occasionally I do something lame that freaks out the operating system. In those cases, it’s certainly my fault the system didn’t behave itself.
Brian Knoblauch

Currently at 6.65, but varies between 5 and 8.
Jim

9.59. So maybe that’s why my Vista experience has been so good :D. I wonder if it will creep back up to 10 at some point. Hope so.

Worst its been was 4.84, but that was due too ATi driver installation problems & games crashes. All fine now.

I do like how it gives you the reason for the score drops & what’s been installed.
http://www.dominicpettifer.co.uk Dominic Pettifer

6.73

It only shows a score for a specific day you select, and not the average. Anyway to get it to show the average?
Charles

Bizarre — everyone seems to have really unstable systems. I’ve only been moderately happy with my system stability, but my index is 9.85 and I’ve been running since a few weeks after the initial launch.
Tom Servo

Mine’s at 7.81, but 90% of the crashes are due to FF3, which crashes roughly twice a day, even in “Stable”.
Tim Baker

70% of my problems were caused by bad video drivers. The other 30% was Outlook 2007, at least what it says. It’s actually my Barracuda Networks add-in which has problems with 64bit. It’s nice to see what causes most of the problems over time. FF3 gives me problems on XP at work, caused by IE Tabs I think. FF3 has been perfect at on Vista 64.
defcon

mine is 1.96..
but all my errors are related to the SearchProtocolHost.exe
don’t know why tho
RizwanSharp

“defcon
mine is 1.96…..”

Not so bad defcon. I think I have the worst machine amongst all the chaps :D. Mine is 1.84 Oh Maaaaaaa Gggggg………..

Rizwan :)
defcon

haha Rizwan

mine just went up to 2.04
reason: some vista updates :)

my worst score was a week back: 1.64 haha

my guess is that the Vista Reliability Index isn’t reliable!
Oliver Smith

8.77 and been running vista since 07/11/2007

Seems pretty reliable for me.
RizwanSharp

My Office Machine is at 10… Wow… Seems like I have broken both the top and the lowest records. For home 1.84 and for office 10 :D.
So we can assume Vista is the most stable OS for office but not home :P. Just joking. The real reason that I do more experiments and beta installation at home PC but not on Office’s machine.

Thanks!
Rizwan.
http://www.niharsworld.com Nihar

Didn’t knew about this utility before.

Will try it on my Vista Laptop
http://laxess.blogspot.com jordi

Mine is 5.48…the only problems I had so far were with Excel 2007 as it has unexpected shut downs all the time, otherwise I had little problems with Vista.
defcon

it went up again ^^
2.50 now :)

i’m i the only one which has alot of error from the SearchProtocolHost.exe ??
Pete

Mine dropped to 3.21 after installing service pack 1. ended up running in safe mode for a week trying to stop all the bells and whistles that start up as services. Back up to 8.59 now.

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Windows Vista Reliability Index: How Stable Is Your PC With Vista?

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