Windows 7 - All kinds of problems

Would appreciate input from anyone who has experienced/fixed these issues in Windows 7!

First - Dell Inspiron 530, 3GB RAM, 128MB NVIDIA 8300 GS (upgrading to this beast as soon as it arrives), all latest drivers as provided by Windows Update and official Windows 7 Hardware Support page.

-iTunes will start, but after about 10 seconds it freezes. Music will continue playing until I eject the CD or turn off the computer, but the UI is non-responsive. Trying to end the process through Task Manager is useless.

-Unable to shut down the computer without pressing and holding the power button. I had this problem in Vista awhile back and traced it back to either the audio or video drivers. Unable to trace this one as of yet.

-Abnormal Program Terminations in Firefox all the time. I usually browse with 3+ tabs open, but never had a problem in Vista.

-System Restore left overnight, woke up to find it still "restoring the registry". Likely related to the computers inability to shut down

-Various small glitches, such as the desktop (set to be straight black, no photos) randomly freaking out and showing 20-40 pixel high rows of different 'captures' of past screen activity. Fixed by right-clicking > Personalize > problem goes away

-Volume control is too loud - on its lowest setting using the system tray icon, the volume is far louder than it should be. If I turn it up past 6-7 notches, it's blasting (out of 100)

Thanks in advance - loving everything else about Windows 7 so far

Hi kerph32 and welcome to the forum!

Personally, if I see this kind of mess happening on my system, I'd just go ahead and do a clean install.

On drivers: I'd also suggest going directly to your components manufacturer site to check the drivers from there as some just churns up new drivers almost regularly.

On iTunes: There's been no real problems with this program especially the latest one. A reinstall of the latest from apple might do the trick.

On Shut Downs: I'd check event viewer for clues as to what processes are holding the shut down process. You can use a registry tweak to shorten windows wait time on forcing processes to end;

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
WaitToKillServiceTimeout = 5000

On FireFox: Re-install the latest package available, here

On System Restore: Probably a corrupt system restore point, software/hardware conflict, check error codes in Event Viewer. I'd look carefully for loaded forced devices that are not vista compatible (i.e. USB devices, Old sound cards, unsupported external connections, etc.)

On Desktop Display: points to a faulty video driver

On Volume: driver issue, reinstall audio drivers

Please let us know how it turns out for yah

Well that was about the most useful post I've ever read - thanks! I'm out of town until Monday but I will try your suggestions when I return and report back with results-

Thank you and you're most welcome.

We'd be very happy to hear what happens
A lot regulars here are more than eager to jump in and help out.

Cheers

I have the same issue with iTunes, but am able to kill it in Task manager. Searching for a solution...

Edit: if I start iTunes with wifi disabled, it runs fine. I can then enable internet access and proceed as usual. Could be an auto-update or auto-download related issue.

As it turns out, MagicISO was causing all of my problems! After some googling I found that many people were having the same issues, so I followed some instructions to uninstall and edit the registry to totally wipe all remnants and voila, back to normal Windows 7.

Good luck!