Is Windows 8 not as stable as 7?

[Rhonda the Sly]

I started reading this thread from the top before I realized it was necro.

I just wanted to point out that the site that had OP worried about Windows 8's stability had these two gems:

...it seems that Windows 8 users see only 3.1 per month compared to 7.1 per month for Windows 7 users.

and

The data also shows that Windows 8 users see fewer non-responsive apps and fewer BSoDs than Windows 7 users.

And the OpenGL driver in Nvidia's latest beta driver is especially buggy, watch out for that.

 

[Savatar]

I have personally had more problems on Windows 8 (blue screens) than with Windows 7 that I can recall... though I think the problems I've had are related to bad nVidia drivers and third-party anti-virus scanner code which is not ready for Windows 8 yet, from reading online.

 

[darkewaffle]

Personally there's been no difference between the two, both very stable. Opera doesn't seem to work very well on 8 yet, but I put that on Opera.

 

[Mushkins]

The base OS for both are extremely stable. Pretty much all the crashes i've ever seen or heard about on either OS can be attributed to a non-OS software problem, a hardware problem, or data corruption.

I haven't really even heard of anyone talking about the OS being stable or not since the Win98 days...

 

[corkyg]

I have Win 8 and Win 7 on the same machine - two different selectable drives. Both have identical software. Never had a bluescreen or any kind of problem with either OS. Mushkins is spot on.

 

[Zxian]

http://gizmodo.com/373076/nvidia-responsible-for-nearly-30-of-vista-crashes-in-2007

It's nVidia's lack of proper support that's causing a lot of issues again. I had Win8 on my netbook for some time without any stability issues. Rolled back to Win7 because of a third-party driver for my wireless card that wasn't as reliable as I wanted it to be - no fault of Win8.

 

[escrow4]

The base OS for both are extremely stable. Pretty much all the crashes i've ever seen or heard about on either OS can be attributed to a non-OS software problem, a hardware problem, or data corruption.

I haven't really even heard of anyone talking about the OS being stable or not since the Win98 days...

+ 1000.

Win 8's kernel and guts are rock solid (yes there are still legacy bits but anyway) its users using 1995 serial printers and old junker hardware that has no Win 8 certified drivers crashing, then complaining its 8's fault. I had very little BSOD's with 7, with 8 zero. All my hardware is fresh up to date. If you want a stable modern OS use stable modern (new) hardware.

 

[Matt1970]

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.

You must have had a bad install of XP. Almost eveyone I talked to seemed to have the same verdict that XP was the most stable operating system to date.

 

[Mem]

You must have had a bad install of XP. Almost eveyone I talked to seemed to have the same verdict that XP was the most stable operating system to date.

It was the famous Via 4 in 1 drivers , also Nvidia had a few driver issues with Via based motherboards back then,however I did say it was not XP's fault but drivers.

I also had a friend back then that installed SP2 on her XP and it hosed her system,I felt guilty because I recommended SP2 installation ,anyway way it goes since no OS is perfect.

XP also had poor security full of security holes,another reason why we needed better operating systems.

 

[BrightCandle]

I certainly had NVidia driver crashes early on, I also had explorer crash a few times as well. Explorer might have crashed due to graphics drivers, but that seems unlikely, its more likely that was due to problems in explorer itself. It quickly restarted so it wasn't a big problem but its not fair to say Windows 8 on release was bug free. Most likely is that Microsoft has patched the crashing bugs in the last 10 months.

 

[Mushkins]

It was the famous Via 4 in 1 drivers , also Nvidia had a few driver issues with Via based motherboards back then,however I did say it was not XP's fault but drivers.

I also had a friend back then that installed SP2 on her XP and it hosed her system,I felt guilty because I recommended SP2 installation ,anyway way it goes since no OS is perfect.

XP also had poor security full of security holes,another reason why we needed better operating systems.

I've had SP installations in XP hose the OS just like that more than once. Not really a fault of the OS, there were issues with the way Microsoft made the service packs that seemed to conflict with certain configurations. Service packs are such major updates that any little thing done to the computer, especially tiny leftover bits of benign malware that wasnt removed can cause issues. The best time to install service packs will always be during the updates immediately after a fresh reinstall

 

[darkewaffle]

You must have had a bad install of XP. Almost eveyone I talked to seemed to have the same verdict that XP was the most stable operating system to date.

Has not been my experience. Definitely more BSODs with XP (though still not 'a lot' of them by any means) but short of true crashes, I run into a lot more issues in XP with components hanging and (especially) explorer.exe simply dying on me. I cannot count the number of times I've had 'windows explorer' go 'not responding' on me.

 

[Mushkins]

Has not been my experience. Definitely more BSODs with XP (though still not 'a lot' of them by any means) but short of true crashes, I run into a lot more issues in XP with components hanging and (especially) explorer.exe simply dying on me. I cannot count the number of times I've had 'windows explorer' go 'not responding' on me.

There have been advances in Vista and beyond to prevent BSODs that I guess you could really write up as stability improvements in a sense. The OS is "more stable" because it has better ways to protect itself from being dragged down with unstable software/hardware.

One of the big ones being video drivers can fail and restart without causing a BSOD. They just give you the little popup that says the video drivers have been restarted and whatever app you had open probably crashed, but it no longer takes the whole system with it unless it crashed so spectacularly that it *cant* recover and restart.

However unstable explorer in WinXp was 99% of the time caused by a bad windows install or something that hooked itself into explorer improperly causing instabilities. Right click context menus are a huge culprit for explorer crashes, and everyone and their mother shoveling crapware loves to include them.

 

[Matt1970]

It was the famous Via 4 in 1 drivers , also Nvidia had a few driver issues with Via based motherboards back then,however I did say it was not XP's fault but drivers.

I also had a friend back then that installed SP2 on her XP and it hosed her system,I felt guilty because I recommended SP2 installation ,anyway way it goes since no OS is perfect.

XP also had poor security full of security holes,another reason why we needed better operating systems.

You had me at VIA

 

[borderdeal]

For me both Windows 7 and 8 have been really stable. No complains so far and in my experience when I went from Win 7 to Win 8 on my system it felt faster and snappier but than again it might just be my imagination :biggrin:

 

[Chiropteran]

Windows 8 itself is perfectly stable, but some drivers written for 8 are terrible and if your hardware requires those drivers you might suffer some. It was the exact same story with Vista- the base OS was fine, but a lot of drivers were not written correctly in the first year of usage and caused a lot of crashes.

http://gizmodo.com/373076/nvidia-responsible-for-nearly-30-of-vista-crashes-in-2007

Windows 7 largely avoided this problem because Windows 7 drivers are identicle to Vista drivers, the bugs had been already worked out by the time 7 was released.

8.1 will *seem* to be more stable than 8, for the same reason- the Windows 8 drivers will be robust and stable by the time 8.1 is released.


edit: XP too was incredibly unstable due to drivers in it's early days, most people who remember XP fondly only experienced SP3+ XP. The original OS release was plagued with problems. Looking further back, I'm sure there was a time when Win 95 was considered more stable than 98.

 

[Hero1711]

It all comes down to hardware/software compatibility. I went from 98SE to 2000 to XP to XPMC to Vista to 7 to 8 no problem whatsoever.

 

[Ketchup]

I haven't spent enough time with 8 to give an opinion based on my personal experience. BUT, the majority of people I have seen and tried to help were having issues with drivers or UEFI.

So I would pose two questions here:
1. Hardware manufacturers: Why can't you make drivers for an OS. Did Vista teach you nothing?
2. Microsoft: It probably wasn't your smartest move to roll out your most drastically different OS since Windows 95 at the same time UEFI was rolling out in new hardware.

 

[XiandreX]

I have had a very pleasant experience with Windows 8 Pro 64bit. I used Windows 7 Pro 64bit and Ultimate prior and do not notice a difference. I even run Classic shell with no issues.

 

[Pr0d1gy]

No problems here, did fall out of like with Metro/Start after awhile though.

 

[TechVill]

based on my personal experience, windows 7 is more stable than windows 8. my computer lags more with windows 8.