I am sadly thinking that a return is going to have to be attempted - I hate to think of starting over with all of that setup (let alone finding my awol receipt) but am also very skeptical that I won't run into these same problems again if I get a replacement with the same specs.  It could be because I have been immersed in reading forums all day reporting the same situation with various suspected culprits, but this seems like a pretty pervasive issue.  In your opinion, is this fairly unique or very commonplace?  What do I have to do to avoid this again? Thoughts?

Still trying to get a decent backup of my files... Windows Backup & Restore Center does not like my external hard drive, and Windows Explorer seems to freeze and crash quicker than other apps... is there a recommended way to copy off these files that is less likely to give me problems?

Thanks very much!

I have tried everything I can short of taking the back off and trying to moved the DvDROM drive to different ports -- I am considering doing that but am afrail I will void some sort of warranty.  And I gotta find a tiny screwdriver. 

I did get my files backed up.  I got an outlook backup a week ago but can't seem to get Outlook to hang in there with me long enough to get the last week's emails backed up, too.

I think this must be a screwy installation of vista because I didn't have any restore points and although I was able to manually create one it still wasnt automatically creating one every day as it was supposed to.  And when I tried to go to System Protection (to turn on this feature), as the windows help files directed, it brought up what seemed to be the wrong dialog box - one titled System Properties that had none of the same fields and tabs that the help files were directing me to find.  Strange...

So I guess we are going back to the store.  I don't feel confident buying another vista machine at this point, especially after hearing what you have to say about it.  So I need to figure out if I can buy a new laptop with XP that will meet my needs (I am a graphic designer) or maybe consider a mac.  I was tempted this time around but I was so comfortable with XP that i didn't want to depart that far from my comfort level.  Plus, I'd have to rebuy some software for which I already owned windows versions.  But Vista has been such an unpleasant experience - between these problems and just because it is different enough from XP that my comfort level is lost anyway...  sigh.  Or maybe just go back to this old trusty duct-taped machine for a while. 

If you have any advice for what you'd buy to replace the returned one, I'd love to hear it. 

I sincerely appreicate your help thus far.

Christine

We'll see...

 I disable window firewall. haveing two firewall running was causing the problem.

I've been having some access problems over the last few weeks after installing xamps. So I've been working around them. Then I installed CA Security Suite and started getting this error message.

Login process has failed to create the security options dialog
With a dialog message of:
Failure - Security Options

I installed, uninstalled, and even re-installed Vista. Always got to the point of CA install when I was getting this error. So I thought okay something to do with this. Then a friend told me to make sure the firewalls are up to date on my PC that handlers the network and disable the UOC in Vista.

That's been over a week ago and I haven't had any problems or errors yet. I've even added another firewall and virus scanner along with spydoctor. They all are running quite peacefully together.

I don't know if its the cause but it might help with a few.

"You're just jealous because the voices only talk to me."

5.0 Windows Experience Vista Home Premium

Intel Core2 Duo CPU E8400 3.0GHz 3G 6MB Cache 1333MHz FSB | Extreme Performance (RAID 0) - 500GB (2 x 250GB) SATA 3Gb/s 7,200RPM 2 x 16MB Cache | nForce 680i SLI | Ageia PhysX PCI

I uninstalled PC Tools Antivirus, and replaced it with Avast.  Everything is working fine now.

Avast also replaced Windows Defender as the anti-spyware tool on my machine.

I don't think PC Tools is directly responsible here (I think the bug lies in Vista itself), but uninstalling it worked for me.

DISABLE READYBOOST FROM WINDOWS SERVICES

(can be done by start > run > msconfig  under the services tab disable readyboost from microsoft corporation!)

Im kinda newb at vista, solved the problem by a stupid brute force method. I have to share how I did it being I have been up all night trying to figure it out.

I started by disabling all services and startup programs that yielded no problems. So I then turned on all startup programs but kept off all start up services > my comp still worked fine.

I then tried turning on all microsoft services but leaving the rest off > the problem still persisted.

Lol so I just played that higher lower game you played when you were a kid. Turned off half of the microsoft services then another half then another half till I narrowed it down to readyboost.

Hopes this works for all of you!! If turning of readyboost still doesn't fix this nasty problem I suggest trying my brute force method and seeing what you come up with

cheers!!

---Edit---

I did a lil more research on readyboost and found out what it does in general:

ReadyBoost is an operating system feature included with Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system. It works by using flash memory, USB 2.0 drive, SD card, CompactFlash or any kind of portable massive flash storage as a drive for disk cache.

The coincidence is that I just recently bought a iphone and have been using it with my laptop. Anyone else start having this problem after using a iphone or ipod with their computer?

Of corse this is just a theory...