Why the blue screen of death no longer plagues Windows users

[Chiefcrowe]

I thought this was pretty interesting -

http://www.zdnet.com/why-the-blue-screen-of-death-no-longer-plagues-windows-users-7000021327

 

[Zaap]

Interesting. I've always found that BSODs were almost always hardware related.
Cheap/crap hardware= prone to blue screens.
Quality hardware= virtually no blue screens.

I've thankfully never had a BSOD on most of my current PC's.

 

[imagoon]

Interesting. I've always found that BSODs were almost always hardware related.
Cheap/crap hardware= prone to blue screens.
Quality hardware= virtually no blue screens.

I've thankfully never had a BSOD on most of my current PC's.

Cheap hardware -> generally "cheap software"
Quality hardware -> generally "quality software"

Isolation of the driver subsystem from the system kernel helped a lot also. IE video card crashes don't always crash the computer any more. Granted when the card crashes you may not be able to see anything to do anything with the pc but...

Most of Windows "issues" really are not real Windows issues but poor hardware / drivers / viruses downloaded by the user. Pure windows is very stable typically.

 

[glugglug]

Also, most drivers no longer run in the kernel. Your video driver can crash, and Vista/7/8 will restart the driver without a blue screen.

It is still possible to bluescreen Windows 7 and 8 by disconnecting a USB hub while multiple devices are plugged into it, through the standard Microsoft USB drivers. Doesn't happen every time, but it isn't terribly hard to reproduce.

 

[readymix]

not to long ago starting everest ultimate was causing intel rst to bs. I just happened to be doing updates at the same time these 2 companies were releasing new software versions. everest patched in a day or 2.

 

[Zaap]

Cheap hardware -> generally "cheap software"
Quality hardware -> generally "quality software"

True, though some of the worst offenders in the cheap category I've seen have nothing to do with 'cheap software' per se, IE: cheap RAM. Sometimes even crap quality cables as well.

And the worst of all- sketchy PSUs.

Nothing can wreak random havoc on a system in my experience like unstable power.

 

[Mem]

Interesting. I've always found that BSODs were almost always hardware related.
Cheap/crap hardware= prone to blue screens.
Quality hardware= virtually no blue screens.

I've thankfully never had a BSOD on most of my current PC's.

You don't remember the old days ie on WinXP with the infamous VIA 4 in 1 drivers,I'm sure a few members here remember the BSOD issues with those especially the VIA IDE driver.

 

[darkewaffle]

It's awesome that they refer to the tools they built as Slam and Slayer and Terminator lol

 

[Insert_Nickname]

You don't remember the old days ie on WinXP with the infamous VIA 4 in 1 drivers,I'm sure a few members here remember the BSOD issues with those especially the VIA IDE driver.

Did you really have to bring the old VIA 4in1 drivers up? I had hoped to forget those...

 

[Mem]

Did you really have to bring the old VIA 4in1 drivers up? I had hoped to forget those...

Hehe well I could of stated Creative sound driver issues back then as well so take your pick,point was there was a lot of driver issues that did cause BSOD in those days and Microsoft in their wisdom addressed most of the issues from Vista onwards.

In my experience back then it certainly was more drivers then hardware,I was using quality hardware back then ie Crucial ram,Enermax PSU etc...but these can't stop BSOD with crappy drivers.

 

[Wolfpup]

You don't remember the old days ie on WinXP with the infamous VIA 4 in 1 drivers,I'm sure a few members here remember the BSOD issues with those especially the VIA IDE driver.

AAAAAAAAAAAH I'd forgotten I had a VIA chipset in an Athlon system. Those were hooooooooooooooooorrible. They had to release BIOS updates and driver updates weekly, and after half a year of that I STILL couldn't go more than 5 minutes without using the serial port crashing the system.

Other than that, with quality hardware I've just never seen Windows NT crash, outside dying hardware. A stick of RAM that was going bad caused crashes maybe once, twice a year, then finally failed outright. A dead hard drive. I've got a system with a dying GPU that crashes periodically. Sometimes Windows can reboot the driver and work, other times you can tell Windows is still running back there, but can't err...see it, etc.

I love NT generally speaking

 

[CSMR]

You don't get crashes, but still if you do not have working drivers you do not have a working system.

It has helped that processors have more and more integrated features that used to be provided by 3rd parties, so almost all of my drivers are from Intel. Not perfect but reliable. The one non-Intel bit of my laptop (Ricoh card reader) was the one component which had a malfunctioning driver, which took months of system instability to diagnose.

 

[Sheep221]

Cheap hardware -> generally "cheap software"
Quality hardware -> generally "quality software"

Isolation of the driver subsystem from the system kernel helped a lot also. IE video card crashes don't always crash the computer any more. Granted when the card crashes you may not be able to see anything to do anything with the pc but...

Most of Windows "issues" really are not real Windows issues but poor hardware / drivers / viruses downloaded by the user. Pure windows is very stable typically.

Interesting. I've always found that BSODs were almost always hardware related.
Cheap/crap hardware= prone to blue screens.
Quality hardware= virtually no blue screens.

I've thankfully never had a BSOD on most of my current PC's.

None of these are true, the expensive hardware is same way error and failure prone than cheap hardware. Today, price of hardware oftenly reflect features and ergonomy rather build quality, at least when we speak about desktop computers, and ofc due to complex manufacturing the reliability varies from piece to piece and design of particular item. I don't want to get into gadgets and phones, that's different.

 

[cheez]

There is also BSOD's caused by incompatibility, despite the driver is loaded in the operating system for an USB device to work, even though they work, there is some timing issues that cause the system to fail, BSOD sporadically. This is coming from years of experience.

Rule of thumb, keep hardware and software version up-to-date. That's the best to start.


cheez

 

[imagoon]

None of these are true, the expensive hardware is same way error and failure prone than cheap hardware. Today, price of hardware oftenly reflect features and ergonomy rather build quality, at least when we speak about desktop computers, and ofc due to complex manufacturing the reliability varies from piece to piece and design of particular item. I don't want to get into gadgets and phones, that's different.

So your telling me that an eMachine compares to say a Dell 2800 series server?

E-Machine that was barely stable from the factory compared to the Dell 2850 that has nearly 3650 days of run time with what amounts to 3 blue screens in its entire operational life? You don't think that companies such as LSI put better effort into coding their RAID card drivers than say Via southbridge RAID (or the above mentioned 4 in one)? Intel NICs vs Realtek? (concession: Realtek has actually made drastic improvements in the last 2 years.)

 

[Sheep221]

So your telling me that an eMachine compares to say a Dell 2800 series server?

E-Machine that was barely stable from the factory compared to the Dell 2850 that has nearly 3650 days of run time with what amounts to 3 blue screens in its entire operational life? You don't think that companies such as LSI put better effort into coding their RAID card drivers than say Via southbridge RAID (or the above mentioned 4 in one)? Intel NICs vs Realtek? (concession: Realtek has actually made drastic improvements in the last 2 years.)

I highlighted that I spoke about desktops, not the servers or gadgets.
While the server is physically a desktop either, it's not in this case.
About the NICs, what is wrong with realtek network card, unless you really have specific reason to hate, don't. I have 9 yr old realtek NIC which didn't fail a single time. Its cost at the time was $8

 

[imagoon]

I highlighted that I spoke about desktops, not the servers or gadgets.
While the server is physically a desktop either, it's not in this case.
About the NICs, what is wrong with realtek network card, unless you really have specific reason to hate, don't. I have 9 yr old realtek NIC which didn't fail a single time. Its cost at the time was $8

Realtek are cheap cards and in most circles acknowledged to have poor and unstable driver support. Basically a case and point example for my claim. So compare an eMachine to a Dell Precision T6500 then if you want desktop to desktop. Same case. I had several that were retired due to power consumption and heat output that lived for another 2 years as a test lab.

 

[Bateluer]

Windows still has blue screens. They're just useless and retarded now, for the iThing generation.

 

[Mem]

Windows still has blue screens. They're just useless and retarded now, for the iThing generation.

I had one of them a few weeks ago thanks to faulty corsair ram(65,000 errors),hardware failures can play havoc with any OS or PC.

 

[Zaap]

None of these are true, the expensive hardware is same way error and failure prone than cheap hardware.

Price ≠ quality.

By cheap, I mean poor quality. Price has little to do with it. Not everything that costs a little is crap, and not everything that costs a lot is quality. (Although it's generally accepted as true you'll often pay a little more for quality).

And yes, quality hardware makes a HUGE difference to a system vs. low quality hardware.

In particular with my point, people will sometimes spend top dollar on their main components, then power their system with a $15 no-name brand PSU. Then when it has all sorts of problems: blame it on Windows, blame it on the motherboard/CPU/RAM etc. but never think to check the cheap crap PSU that's pushing unstable voltages through their hardware. I've seen this effect more times than I care to remember over the years dealing with people's PCs.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

In particular with my point, people will sometimes spend top dollar on their main components, then power their system with a $15 no-name brand PSU. Then when it has all sorts of problems: blame it on Windows, blame it on the motherboard/CPU/RAM etc. but never think to check the cheap crap PSU that's pushing unstable voltages through their hardware. I've seen this effect more times than I care to remember over the years dealing with people's PCs.

Now ain't that the truth... :\

 

[exdeath]

Cheap hardware -> generally "cheap software"
Quality hardware -> generally "quality software"

Isolation of the driver subsystem from the system kernel helped a lot also. IE video card crashes don't always crash the computer any more. Granted when the card crashes you may not be able to see anything to do anything with the pc but...

Most of Windows "issues" really are not real Windows issues but poor hardware / drivers / viruses downloaded by the user. Pure windows is very stable typically.

This x9000.

Windows by itself has been top notch since Windows 2000.

Win 9x was a joke.

 

[Dominato3r]

Windows still has blue screens. They're just useless and retarded now, for the iThing generation.

Doesn't most of that information on screen information get put into a crash dump/file after that BSOD?

I'd imagine if you were an everday user, the Windows 8 would look a lot less intimidating. For the advanced user you can search that information snippet they give you and figure your stuff out.

 

[sequoia464]

Windows still has blue screens. They're just useless and retarded now, for the iThing generation.

Odd thing for me is that I get these with W8 but not with W7 using the same hardware. Programs run noticeably slower also for me in W8. All of my hardware is new within the last 8 months and decent quality.

Have to asume it is a driver issue in 8 even though I have been extremely careful in using the proper drivers for W8. In the process now of moving back to 7.

 

[runzwithsizorz]

IMHO Win 8 is still in the beta stage. I skipped the "upgrade" and will wait until 8 is acceptable or just wait for next os. Never did use Vista.