Is Windows 8 not as stable as 7?

[thewhat]

I haven't had any problems with W7, outside of some experimental drivers.
But I've heard reports that W8 is not as stable.
There was also a website (I forgot the name) which showed that explorer.exe tends to crash in W8.
Stability is the most important aspect of an OS to me, so I'd like to know.


(Please keep it on topic, I don't care if you like "metro" or not and so on. This is strictly about stability and bugs.)

 

[Mem]

Stability on Win8 is as good as Win7 in my experience on three of my Win7 to Win8 upgrades,stability issues can be caused by many things on any OS from drivers to faulty hardware or even overclocks etc)I had for example last year faulty HD on Win7 that kept crashing explorer etc...


Anybody that tells you Win8 OS itself is not stable is talking FUD and crap IMHO.

I too value stability and would not have upgraded to Win8 if that was a concern,obviously I can tell you I'm very happy with stability etc in Win8.

 

[thewhat]

BTW, the site I talked about in my first post is Soluto.
It seems their statistics page is no longer available, but you can see the report here:
http://www.zdnet.com/soluto-the-state-of-windows-8-7000007528/
That "Windows Explorer" was the most crashy program had me a bit worried.

 

[BrightCandle]

I have had explorer crash a few times, as have the GPU drivers and even some blue screens and lockups. On windows 7 my machine went months without issue, so yes I think windows 8 is less stable than windows 7, its almost early vista level of instability for me so far.

 

[CSMR]

I have found it to be marginally less stable than Win7. I sometimes get a bug that the system stalls on logout of a user account. Requires restart. I also get another bug that "fast user switching" is very slow to switch back into an account.

If your main concern is stability, I would wait a year or two before adopting Win8, or wait until Win9.

 

[Jaskalas]

If your main concern is stability, I would wait a year or two before adopting Win8, or wait until Win9.

FIFY: Wait a year or two before adopting any new OS.

 

[brandonb]

I've had to disable many USB drivers in Device Manager to get my Win8 stable. There was a rewrite of how USB's work in the native drivers for Windows 8, and some applications don't like it at all.

Otherwise its been stable for me (I am not a heavy user though.)

 

[WilliamM2]

I've had to disable many USB drivers in Device Manager to get my Win8 stable. There was a rewrite of how USB's work in the native drivers for Windows 8, and some applications don't like it at all.

Otherwise its been stable for me (I am not a heavy user though.)

Interesting. I've had Media Center crash whenever I plug in a USB drive. It happens with all of them I've tried. Wonder if that's related.

And sometimes Media center won't work at all anyways, and I have to reboot to get it going again. Never had any issues with it in 7, so obviously, I don't find 8 as stable as 7.

 

[Maximilian]

I haven't had any problems with W7, outside of some experimental drivers.
But I've heard reports that W8 is not as stable.
There was also a website (I forgot the name) which showed that explorer.exe tends to crash in W8.
Stability is the most important aspect of an OS to me, so I'd like to know.


(Please keep it on topic, I don't care if you like "metro" or not and so on. This is strictly about stability and bugs.)

Meh... i had a better time with windows 7 overall as far as stability is concernced. Ive been using 8 for 2 months now (got it free) and ive had the pc refuse to boot up, it wakes itself up on its own, and a couple of times when booting it up nothing appears on the screen.

Whatever causes these problems they all seem to be linked to the half assed new way windows shuts down which they dubbed "fast boot", turning that off causes most of these issues to disappear, it still wakes up on its own though but ive disabled the network cards ability to wake up the PC manually as it was that which was waking it up. The shutdown issues may be linked to my graphics card not supporting the new hibernate shutdown thing, im not 100% sure i just want the thing off when i don't need it and on when i do, idgaf if it takes 10 or 40 seconds to boot as long as it works

Others love windows 8 and have a major hard-on for it for it so YMMV, it might be solid as a rock or it might give you weird issues.

 

[Evander]

I have had explorer crash a few times, as have the GPU drivers and even some blue screens and lockups. On windows 7 my machine went months without issue, so yes I think windows 8 is less stable than windows 7, its almost early vista level of instability for me so far.

I've also had GPU driver crashes with Win 8

 

[Raincity]

I have been having some slight issues with Win 8 and Office 2013 but have just learned to limp along with it. I never had these issues with my Win 7 Office 07/10 machines. Maybe I should blow off the drives and roll back.

 

[Quantos]

Hmm. I think so far the only issues I've had with Windows 8 were application related, and not caused by the OS. It's just as stable as Windows 7 for me. That's very stable, too! ^_^

 

[Mem]

Hmm. I think so far the only issues I've had with Windows 8 were application related, and not caused by the OS. It's just as stable as Windows 7 for me. That's very stable, too! ^_^

That's true in most cases,I read about some that have installed a third party Start Button and it crashed their Win8,end of the day OS is stable ,its just some software etc is a bit dodgy,however you can say that about any OS with regards to software etc...


USB wise no issues here on Win8(I've WMC installed as well),got a nice list below.

USB mouse
USB keyboard
Leadtek USB DTV dongle(watch digital TV via WMC)
7x USB flash Sticks(different brands and sizes)
USB external DVD(Lite-On) fine on Win8.
7 Port external USB HUB connected to Win8
USB to my Olympus Digital camera.
USB connection to my Android Tablet works ok with my Win8
USB Canon Printer
USB to my Sony Android SmartPhone ok with my Win8
2 port external USB 3.0 working fine.

I've a few more and yes I like my USB devices so they are important they do work for me which they do .
Ironically mine was a upgrade from Win7 to 8 so not a clean install of Win8,goes to show upgrades can be very stable too(even with my overclocked CPU and video card).

 

[AustinInDallas]

I had my first win8 crash yesterday (been using it since October 26th) while playing an "acquired" version of crysis 3, using beta video drivers, and testing a graphic card overclock.

All and all, I would say that win8 is extremely stable, and I am very happy with it.

and as an added bonus I was back to my desktop in 13 secs including the error screen!

 

[ImDonly1]

I have had my AMD GPU driver stopped working and restart itself causing the PC to lockup for a few seconds. I think it has been fixed in the latest driver update though. I don't think I have had it happen lately.

Never had any other crashes or anything.

 

[Bearach]

I haven't had any problems with W7, outside of some experimental drivers.
But I've heard reports that W8 is not as stable.
There was also a website (I forgot the name) which showed that explorer.exe tends to crash in W8.
Stability is the most important aspect of an OS to me, so I'd like to know.


(Please keep it on topic, I don't care if you like "metro" or not and so on. This is strictly about stability and bugs.)

I've found it no different stability wise compared to Windows 7. Though I've not had a single crash on Windows 8, and didn't for a long time on 7.

 

[kmmatney]

I would say Win 8 is overall very stable, although in my experience it's been a little less stable that Windows 7. I also went from 32-bit Win7 to 64-bit Win8, so that could be part of the problem. In truth, I only upgraded to Windows 8 because I wanted to go to 64-bit, and Windows 8 was much cheaper than Windows 7.

 

[blankslate]

Rule of thumb is wait for the first service pack of a new microsoft OS before upgrading.

Vista before SP1 slow and had problems with drivers from manufacturers who were too lazy to change the way they wrote drivers for their components.

After SP1 Vista was decent but its reputation was set in stone.

Win 7 is like Vista SP3... sort of.

 

[yhelothar]

A lot of older Intel WiFi cards has incompatibility issues with W8 and will cause bluescreen. My X61 Tablet gets BSoDs due to this.

 

[Mem]

Rule of thumb is wait for the first service pack of a new microsoft OS before upgrading.

Vista before SP1 slow and had problems with drivers from manufacturers who were too lazy to change the way they wrote drivers for their components.

After SP1 Vista was decent but its reputation was set in stone.

Win 7 is like Vista SP3... sort of.

Service packs will be thing of the past if Microsoft go on yearly upgrades for operating systems,besides Vista main issues was lack of driver support by lazy companies in the early days and OEM companies shipping PCs etc below Vista's recommended minimum spec ,this did a lot of damage to Vista,Win7 had the advantage of being able to use Vista drivers and futher two years refinement and better more powerful hardware available to the consumer etc..


Don't forget Windows Blue is due late summer .

 

[blankslate]

besides Vista main issues was lack of driver support by lazy companies in the early days and OEM companies shipping PCs etc below Vista's recommended minimum spec

I mentioned the driver support. It's also not as if Vista shipped with no inherent issues.
Vista's SP 1 collected hotfixes brought solutions to those issues. When Vista SP 1 was released then it was reasonable to think that MS had solved enough bugs and issues (and that peripheral and component manufacturers finally learned that they needed to write drivers to spec) that Vista would be decent to use.

On initial release, file copying from one location to another or unzipping files could be painfully slow, there were issues recovering from sleep and hibernation states that weren't just driver issues.

If a person waited until SP 1 for Vista was release before using the OS their opinion of it would probably have been better.

Win7 had the advantage of being able to use Vista drivers and futher two years refinement and better more powerful hardware available to the consumer etc..

Well it's pretty much the same kernel as Vista, which was "tuned up" even further if you will for Win7. It looks a bit different and has interface improvements, but in many cases you can use the same drivers mainly because the guts of the OS weren't changed much from Vista's other than to improve general performance.

I finally upgraded my old e1705 laptop from XP to Win7 and compared to my Vista laptop one thing I've noticed that Win7 has some services set to manual whereas in Vista the same service was set to automatic.

I've read one or two tech blogs suggesting that Windows XP as it was upon initial release could be considered a different OS than XP service pack 3.

I may be exaggerating when I say that Win7 is Vista SP3 but they just didn't want to use the Vista name but probably not by that much.

I probably should have said that "Rule of thumb *was* wait for the first service pack of a new Microsoft OS before upgrading."

Maybe Blue will be much the same as a Win 8 sp1 release with another name?

Don't forget Windows Blue is due late summer .

As far as I recall service packs for MS OSes were released within 1.5 to 2 years after the Initial release dates of the OS. It looks like MS is speeding up OS development but not by much. It's doubtful that Blues Kernel will be much different from Win8.

 

[sandorski]

Been using for a month now. Haven't had any issues.

 

[Mem]

I mentioned the driver support. It's also not as if Vista shipped with no inherent issues.
Vista's SP 1 collected hotfixes brought solutions to those issues. When Vista SP 1 was released then it was reasonable to think that MS had solved enough bugs and issues (and that peripheral and component manufacturers finally learned that they needed to write drivers to spec) that Vista would be decent to use.

On initial release, file copying from one location to another or unzipping files could be painfully slow, there were issues recovering from sleep and hibernation states that weren't just driver issues.

If a person waited until SP 1 for Vista was release before using the OS their opinion of it would probably have been better.

Well it's pretty much the same kernel as Vista, which was "tuned up" even further if you will for Win7. It looks a bit different and has interface improvements, but in many cases you can use the same drivers mainly because the guts of the OS weren't changed much from Vista's other than to improve general performance.

I finally upgraded my old e1705 laptop from XP to Win7 and compared to my Vista laptop one thing I've noticed that Win7 has some services set to manual whereas in Vista the same service was set to automatic.

I've read one or two tech blogs suggesting that Windows XP as it was upon initial release could be considered a different OS than XP service pack 3.

I may be exaggerating when I say that Win7 is Vista SP3 but they just didn't want to use the Vista name but probably not by that much.

I probably should have said that "Rule of thumb *was* wait for the first service pack of a new Microsoft OS before upgrading."

Maybe Blue will be much the same as a Win 8 sp1 release with another name?


As far as I recall service packs for MS OSes were released within 1.5 to 2 years after the Initial release dates of the OS. It looks like MS is speeding up OS development but not by much. It's doubtful that Blues Kernel will be much different from Win8.

No OS is perfect I mean look at Win7 that had Vista for a template and two years of refinement yet that still had a Service Pack,infact virtually every Microsoft OS has had a least one Service Pack,anyway be interesting to what Windows Blue has with regards to new features and changes.

I'll say I did use XP,Vista,Win7,Win8 since day one and only OS I wished I waited for was XP, XP the was most unstable OS for me in the early days ,to be fair most of it was drivers etc so not really XP's fault,Vista did not give me any issues neither did Win7 or Win8 for that matter.

After Windows Blue comes Win9 wonder how near that is.

 

[Dankk]

I have had explorer crash a few times, as have the GPU drivers and even some blue screens and lockups. On windows 7 my machine went months without issue, so yes I think windows 8 is less stable than windows 7, its almost early vista level of instability for me so far.

This is my experience as well.

I just upgraded to Windows 8 about a month ago; did a clean wipe, fresh install, and it's fully updated with the correct drivers and everything. Despite this, I am definitely experiencing more instability than I ever did with Win 7.

It might be working great for a week, and then one day I turn on my PC and explorer.exe goes into a continuous boot/crash loop (this has actually happened a couple times).

On other occasions, my PC will be completely stable all day, until I press the "Shut Down" button to turn it off for the night, and suddenly it BSODs for no apparent reason. There have also been a couple of times when it BSODs right after logging into Windows as well. It never happens in the middle of the day or while I'm working. If it BSODs, it's either right at startup, or right at shutdown... like it's struggling to load system drivers sometimes.

On another occasion, I turned on my PC and as soon as Windows loaded up, my screen started flickering on and off, like my video card was repeatedly turning it's signal on and off. It was in a continuous loop and I had to force a restart. This actually might be more related to video drivers than Windows itself, but still... I never experienced anything that bad on Windows 7.

I've had my PC since October of last year. I experienced maybe two BSODs during the entire time I had Windows 7. And I simply chalked those up to funky memory timings I set in my BIOS; after that I turned on memory XMP and it was completely stable after that.

I've wondered where to draw the line between "something's wrong with my PC", and "Windows is just being inherently dumb". At this point, I'm inclined to think that Windows is being dumb.

 

[Mem]

I have had explorer crash a few times, as have the GPU drivers and even some blue screens and lockups. On windows 7 my machine went months without issue, so yes I think windows 8 is less stable than windows 7, its almost early vista level of instability for me so far.

Did you check Geforce forums ,plenty of Nvidia users with complaints and issues ie lockups etc.. on both Win7,8 etc... caused by their drivers,I've had it happen to me and had to roll back to good old 314.22 drivers which are the best for 4xx and 5xx models IMHO,6xx you can try different ones,however can't blame drivers on the OS regardless of Vista/Win7 or 8.

Example here, Win7 users to prove my point,

I'm having the same problem with an EVGA GTX 780 SC ACX. It seems to crash once per boot and then is fine afterwards. The most reliable way to reproduce the crash I've found is just a couple minutes of Black Ops II. Nowhere near overheating, happens at stock speeds, and I have the newest firmware/drivers installed. This happened for me with the 320.18 drivers as well and actually seems to be harder to cause with 320.49.

In Event Viewer, the crash shows up as a warning with "Display" as the source, EventID is 4101, and the message is "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered."

It's pretty annoying, but I'm glad I'm not the only one.

Intel Core i5 2500k @ 4.2GHz
8GB 1600 MHz RAM (Corsair Vengeance)
EVGA GTX 780 SuperClocked with 320.18 drivers
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

I just buy a new video card GTX 770 and i have the same problem "Display driver nvidia windows kernel mode driver version 320.49 stopped responding and has successfully recovered." for no reason .. i'm tired for searching and read all forums for a solution .. do something , make a new update and resolve this problem ! A lot of people has the same problem on different video cards from nvidia .. ( sorry for my bad english ) Thanks and make time to resolve this problem faster ! Have a nice day !
Case: Corsair Special Edition White Graphite Series™ 600T
Power supply: Corsair HX1050 Gold Certified
Motherboard: Asus Republic Of Gamers Maximus IV Extreme-Z
Graphics Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 2GB GDDR5 [WindForce 3X]
Memory: Corsair Dominator Platinum 8Gb 2133MHz
Processor: Intel Core™ i7-3770K Ivy Bridge
Cooling Processor: Corsair Hydro H100i Extreme Performance
Solid State Drives: Corsair Neutron GTX 120Gb Sata III
Hard Disk Drive: WD Caviar Black 2Tb
Gaming Mouse: Steelseries Sensei Frost Blue
Gaming Headset: Steelseries Siberia v2 Frost Blue
Gaming Keyboard: Razer Marauder StarCraft II
Surface: Qpad CT Black Large
Computer Monitor: Benq XL 2410T
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate x64

I have MSI GT60 403us, with GTX680m i only can play CS source if i put DirectX 8.0, BF3 only can play in window mode and Freezes after minutes playing, CS:GO BSOD, Sleeping Dogs BSOD after 30-40min, i already tried Win8 newer drivers without lucky, the machine freezes at install, next i cant enter nvidia control panel and BSOD for all games... only the default from factory are nvidia control panel functionally. (302.75)

I have tried windows7 fresh install with the same results.

i bought the laptop about 3 month ago, the only game that i could played was Sleeping Dogs and Alan Wake... but its freezes too after about several minutes playing.

i bought this laptop close 2k bucks for gaming, i can´t play anything... only Intel hd saved this laptop, now i can use this only for internet surfing. IM Very disappointed

.

Plenty more https://forums.geforce.com/default/...river-version-xxx-320-49-stopped-responding-/ and that's only one thread .


Unfortunately some drivers can make any OS unstable.