System: HP slimline s7410n, Celeron M 1.7GHz, 1GB RAM, Intel GMA900.Hard crashes (mouse & keyboard are non-responsive)1. Windows hard crash everytime I run the Performance index assessment tool, mainly when it's assessing windows media decoding performance2. Windows hard crash everytime I try playing a video with Windows Media Player. Playing the same videos with VLC is fine3. Windows hard crash while PC is idle, yet there's heavy disk activity without a sign of ever stopping.Ideas? Suggestions?

These are all sure signs that you are running out of resources. If you are not able to use the feedback tools to report the problem, you will probably have to wait for the next build to see improvment.Rating posts helps other users Mark L. Ferguson MS-MVP

Can this system run Windows Vista Home Premium that has the Media Center without experiencing these same issues? If not then Windows 7 will not be able to as well. At this point in time the system requirements are about the same for Windows Vista and Windows 7 till the official requirements are released.If the machine you are testing this on isnt able to run Media Center in Home Premium then it most likely wont be able to do it with Windows 7 Ultimate Beta. As Mark said. You will have to wait for a newer build to maybe see some kind of improvement. ~Alex T.~Windows Desktop Experience MVP~

The original OS on the system was XP Media Center, and it was fine. Running out of resource shouldn't hard crash the OS just like that without warnings, right? I have a feeling this is driver issue, either the video or audio.Speaking of Media center, I ran the Media Center app in Windows beta, it loaded just fine in windowed mode. When I turn it to full screen, the screen went blanks except for the mouse cursor. If I invoked the start menu during the blank full-screen mode, everything is displayed fine. If I click back on the Media center, screen went blank again.I have submitted all of the above using the feedback tool. For now, I've been running a streaming video in Firefox for for hours, and no crash yet.

Also, did you do a clean installation of the OS or an upgrade? If you did an upgrade, I'd suggest attempting a clean installation (just be aware that you'll need an empty partition or drive to attempt this on unless you dont care about your data on your current partition/drive).

It's a clean install. Besides, I don't think you can do an upgrade from XP.I think the crashes during idle might be related to power management. If I have the system active constantly (eg. by playing a streaming video in firefox), it seems to be stable. I have another hard crash today after leaving the system idle for a while. Of course, this could be related to the BIOS and/or drivers related to the motherboard, display, etc. Who knows. I still have no clue why it crashed during the performance index assessment.

same type of problem here with W7. It just crash after booting but sometimes i am able to do things like using live messenger etc... mabe the laptop i'm using is to slow (ok its a celeron 1.4ghz 512Mo and pretty old but) !!! anyways after that i can t do anything nothing is working mouse etc... i just have to reboot . im going to try a restoration on safe mode and i tell you later (going to uninstall live messenger)

ok so after restoring to a previous recovery point, its working ... i suspect 2 things : A: live messenger corrupt installation B: problem of system performance i will reinstall live messenger and will keep you posted ;-)

I had similar problems after loading Messenger. On another thread, I found a solution to set my hardware acceleration on my video to two notches from the left (the one that disables direct draw)

I would suggest downloading and installing the Vista Drivers for you video card and for your MB.Joe

ok so ... about the news ...i uninstalled live messenger ... and run out some test ... but unfortunately... the laptop was still crashing .... my decision then was to reinstall the full thing ... so today ... i did it + was running some other test "till i had to go to the mall"so i just went for grocery and when i came back .... screen was off tried anything but no response... i m going to see with sir Blue Hair and joe's solution (by the way thanks) ill keep you posted ;-)

I am running older harware.. ASUS AV8 Deluxe, Athlon64 3700+ (single core), 3gb PC3200 RAM, and ATI AGP 8x 3850 512mb Video CardI also get blue screened if I try the performance test, and if I leave it running it crashes after a period of inactivity. I have turned off System Sleep and will see if that is the issue. Last time it went to sleep I couldn't recover because it turned off my USB mouse and keyboard and they refused to come back up.