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Why does Windows crash so much?

OS

OS

Lifer
It's annoying beyond belief how win 9x/Me will freeze, crash, BSOD or do something otherwise unpleasant for no apparent reason at all. Why is it so hard to get a windows system stable? I feel like I'm trying to float a piece of swiss cheese. My parents' computer is acting up for no reason at all, it has a completely static software installation, good hardware all around and I just reformatted it at the begining of the summer. I've used Windows for the last 5 years of my life and this happens regardless of what hardware and software is being used, so I can only conclude the operating system is at fault. I can only imagine how many man hours have been wasted trying to get this crap OS to work.

No doubt this sounds like MS bashing, but I think those of you who know me know that I have no such history and a search can confirm this. Obviously win NT/2k is the exception to this and it's no surprise that alot of computer literate people have moved to an NT platform. How can Microsoft pass off such a shoddy piece of software and call it a finished product? If the automotive industry had this kind of quality track record, they'd be putting out cars that roll over and explode for no reason. Oh wait. . .
 
Try drivers. WinMe was decently stable on two of my systems. Of course no where near as stable as XP..
 
Think about this. It's a wonder that any of this sh1t runs together. Guess how many Software and Hardware companies there are? Thousands, Ten of Thousands. It's not all Microsoft's fault.
 
It doesn't, my 2000 machine hasn't crashed once in the 5 (or is it 6 now) weeks since I built it.

I've been very happy with it, best system I've ever had.

Viper GTS
 
my win2k crashes, but only when i'm playing ghost recon and that stupid creative remote center thing pops up. oh my god that thing is so annoying. and you know what the worst part is? if i disable it, i can't use the remote. WHO was the IDIOT who decided that users should be FORCED to have some POS popup on their screen if they want to use a remote? they couldn't just have something that runs in the background that doesn't pop up?
 
I've been running W98se on my machine for a couple years now. The only stability problems I've had have been due to PEBCAK (Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard).
 


<< It doesn't, my 2000 machine hasn't crashed once in the 5 (or is it 6 now) weeks since I built it. >>



Had you bothered to read what I wrote, instead of just reading the title, you would have seen that I called out 9x kernel based OSes and made an exception for NT based ones.

I should mention that for those 5 years that I have been familiar with windows, I have used NT based OSes for 3 years on my main system. IMO, it's a doable task to make an NT system rock solid. I can't say the same thing of any 9X/Me system.
 
"Uptime 181:00:11:29"

I think that means 181 days, 11hours, 29 minutes. 🙂

Win98SE.

65% resources free.

LOL, take the 18 off the 181. The last bsod was 1:00:11:29 ago. (last reboot) :Q
 
My 98SE machine barely crashes... in fact it usually doesn't crash at all.

However, I toy with my system left and right and that does cause instability.

For your parents machine, hell, I don't know. Do you have all the stupid windows critical updates?
 


<< Still Windows, isn't it? >>



I'm not here to argue about semantics. If you can't tell that 9x based OSes are very different from NT based ones, I don't know what to say.
 
The Win9x series has a major limitation in it. The first 640K (IIRC) of memory is shared between all programs that you have running. This is a holdover from the MS-DOS days. Naturally, sharing memory is a bad idea to begin with. And to have it so small is yet another bad idea.

Also, Win9x sucks at managing memory. It will insist on using v-mem even if not truly necessary. It also sometimes won't release memory properly, even if asked nicely by a program.

It also has a finite amount of heap memory. Pass this limit (it ain't hard to do) and everything blows up.
 
My 98 machine was humming along nicely until I decided to try some beta video card drivers. I have only had a couple problems since then but I have been too lazy to uninstall them.
 


<< Still Windows, isn't it? And if you hate the 9x kernels so much why don't you move to 2K or XP?

Viper GTS >>

Seeing as <can't remember his name> and a group of guys from Digital wrote the NT kernal, you really can't compare them.
 
so why dont you just ditch 98? if it doesnt work the first ten times, the obvious thing to do is to try something else. check out windows xp, i garantee you wont be disappointed.
 
Win9X works, until it runs out of resources, which is the leading reason for crashes, freezes, BSOD's, or sluggish performance. Because it has inherent memory managent issues, only the user can tell when it is time to reboot. If rebooted when it needs it, maintenance is regular, and you have a clue what you are doing with the software, you can actually make it work quite well.
 
my XP is a ton more stable than anything else ive ever run... has its issues from time to time, but never crashed yet...
 
When I was running win95, I'd see the BSOD at least twice a day. Then I switched to 98se and had fewer crashes/freezes. But if I'd leave my computer on for a significant amount of time (while downloading a large file or running an ftp server), my computer would always crash (probably bad resource management). I've been on Win2k for about five months now and it is very stable.

You're going to have to upgrade to win2k/linux/bsd to get stability.
 
I run Win98se. Have ever since I got this PC. With the exception of user trials & errors, it's been working just fine. I shopped around the internet for utility programs I thought would enhance the overall performance, made a few bad judgement calls, but finally found, what I feel, is a good combination of utilities. Cleaned all the unused DLLs out of the Windows System Directory, cleared all the registry entries that weren't pointing to.....anything, cleared out all the useless files and other garbage, updated everything I could with CNet's Catchup, and at Windows Update, and tweaked the living daylights out of it with Xteq's X-Setup. I use 3 registry cleaners regularly (Microsoft's RegClean, Jouni Vuorio's Reg Cleaner 4.3, and Easy Cleaner 1.7f by ToniArts - which I also use to clean out useless garbage on a regular basis). I use Clean Disk 3.72 by AE Software (soon to be updated to Clean Disk 2002) to keep other useless setup files & misc. garbage cleaned out. I used Clean System Directory by Kevin Solway to clean out the unused DLLs. I use Windows CleanUp! by The Strangely Green Chicken Company to clean up after a hard night's surfing. I use WinRamTurbo Free v2.2 to free up system resources when it appears I'm fresh out. I use Rain 1.0 for processor cooling, Adaware 5.62 to get rid of potential spyware, Popup Killer 1.40 for obvious reasons, SiSoft Sandra 2001te and Fresh Diagnose 1.5 to find out what's going on in my PC, and I even use a program called Necrofile to clean all the deleted information from my HD. When all is said and done, I use Power Defrag 2.0 lite to cut my defrag time from 35 minutes to 3 minutes🙂 And I visit PC Pitstop regularly just to find out if there are any new problems I should know about (I love that place). Last night I successfully upgraded DirectX to 8.1

Because I downloaded everything "From Current Location" as opposed to downloading the setup files to my HD, I'm still 94% system resources free.

I say all this because so far Win98se has been good to me. I keep it cleaned up, healthy, & happy, and it returns the favor. I keep all the system files, and everything else I can, updated on a regular basis.

Try out some of the utilities I mentioned. Just be extremely cautious with Clean System Directory..... -kd5-
 
My w98se syst.never crashes. Nothing special either: Ath.950 slot A,640mg.ram, 20 gig ata100hd, 32mg.Raedon ddr vid.card 300watt pwr.supply.log.tech.trk.ball, 15"flat panel. 😎
 
Forgot to mention, I have an old Gateway 2000 (G6200) 200mhz Pentium Pro, 128mb RAM, 4.3gb generic HD, generic everything else. It was originally intended for Win95, but my brother put Win98se on it. I've reformatted several times (due to my own ignorance), but my current setup has been running perfectly for the last 8 months or so. Maybe someday I'll upgrade, but for now I'm pretty happy with the status quo.🙂 -kd5-
 
I would have to guess that the main reason the 9x kernel crashes so often is its poor memory management. If you turned on a 9x machine and did absolutely nothing, it could probably run indefinitely, but if you start checking email, browsing the web, playing some games, the OS chokes up before too long, and there's no way to recover the lost memory, other than restarting.

Also, the 9x operating systems try to support more hardware with invariably causes more conflicts than the NT oses, which have drivers written specifically for them, usually a while after a product has been out, so it'll work better.
 
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