Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: aldo_14 on September 04, 2006, 05:00:05 am
-
noted in an article (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/02/technology/02soft.html?_r=3&ref=business&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin) about Vista (note; the rest of the article is just fluff)
In the interview posted by Microsoft, Mr. Hallauer said Vista would have fewer dreaded “blue screens of death,” in which the operating system freezes and leaves the user with a blue display screen. Instead, Vista will automatically recover from such freezes and start over, without forcing the user to restart the system manually.
i.e. it has less blue screens of death.... because it just resets instead? Wouldn't that be far, far worse - because now you can't tell if your PC reset because of Windows or because of an underlying hardware problem?
-
You shouldnt complain... after all, it is not a bug or a problem, its just a new genuine MS Windows feature... :rolleyes:
-
Automatic reboot in case of a BSOD has been around since Windows 2000. I have no clue what the heck that comment is about, but I have a hunch it may have to do something about automatically restarting the affected subsystem instead of computer. After all, that's what the completely redesigned graphics, audio, etc subsystems are supposed to be about. So if your graphics driver would cause a BSOD, restarting the graphics subsystem and drivers won't bring down the whole OS and negates the need to reboot your computer.
-
I'm assuming that it means that the code will thrown an exception at the point that it would usually blue screen and that they're including code to deal with such exceptions. So it's just a poorly worded sentence rather than actually meaning what it seems to.
Cause actually resetting is stupid for the reasons you suggest. Although it would allow MS to claim that there are no bugs in vista and it must be underlying hardware that is causing the crashes.
-
Well, it's either stupid software design or stupid reporting, both of which get on my tits.
-
I think it's do to with restarting the various subsystems (usually graphics) without having to restart the kernel. It's been documented in the past for Vista, I think. Let's not mention another OS that has been able to do this for well over a decade though. :p
-
Vista is great and everything, but freespace no longer runs as of RC1 :(
-
The wonderful thing: The big advantage of Windows, compatibility, seems to be going out the window.
-
Automatic reboot in case of a BSOD has been around since Windows 2000.
I've always found that 'feature' a pain. It takes me 2-3 more crashes after the initial one to be able to read enough of the BSOD, as it flashes by in about .5 -> 1 seconds.
I can see how this might be less stressful on people new to computers, but it's not gonna help diagnose anything...
-
Mars: how so?
-
Mars: how so?
... freespace no longer runs as of RC1
-
Well, I just installed the Pre-RC1 version (clean install to another drive from my main XP install - took literally hours...), and aside from instally stuff, it seems to work fine. I can't seem to find where to submit a bug though, since I apparently found one almost immediately. ;) When you load IE7, and maximize the window, the status bar slips under the windows taskbar. You need to turn off and on the "Always on top" feature of the taskbar for the IE window to recognize the offlimits area it occupies. :p
Other than that.... pretty. All the security dialogs are annoying (personally), but I'm glad that both they and anti-spyware (now known as Windows Defender) are there by default. Hopefully that'll equate to less headache of the "Can you fix my internet???" variety. :rolleyes:
-
You should upgrade to RC1, been out for 3 days and it's even better :)
-
Automatic reboot in case of a BSOD has been around since Windows 2000.
I've always found that 'feature' a pain. It takes me 2-3 more crashes after the initial one to be able to read enough of the BSOD, as it flashes by in about .5 -> 1 seconds.
I can see how this might be less stressful on people new to computers, but it's not gonna help diagnose anything...
You can turn the feature off.
-
You should upgrade to RC1, been out for 3 days and it's even better :)
You're joking, right? Pre-RC1 was just released like... 5 days ago or something!
-
There has been only two public betas; Beta 2 and RC1. Whatever you got was internal build.
-
Sounds like Vista is using a microkernel architecture. The advantage of this is that if part of the kernel or driver model dies, it can be reloaded without screwing anything up.
Microkernels have been around for decades, but they went out of vogue in the late 70s(?) because they ran slower than a monolithic kernel. They're more robust, though, provided the core kernel is done right (and whatever people might say, MS kernels are generally pretty reasonable; it's the drivers and other crap that usually causes the BSOD) and computers these days are fast enough for the speed/stability tradeoff to be worth the shift to microkernels. This also lets them shift all driver code into Ring 1 and 2, ensuring that Ring 0 doesn't get tainted by anything that might bring down the system.
Microkernels are generally easier to test and debug too, so the quality of the kernel should be higher. And kernel updates can be installed and activated without rebooting, so there should be fewer 'Windows Update needs to reboot your computer' messages. Even Linux can't replace the running kernel in memory without shutting down apps.
-
You should upgrade to RC1, been out for 3 days and it's even better :)
You're joking, right? Pre-RC1 was just released like... 5 days ago or something!
I'm not joking. It's build 5600. See you at #winbeta at irc.winbeta.org
-
Sounds like Vista is using a microkernel architecture. The advantage of this is that if part of the kernel or driver model dies, it can be reloaded without screwing anything up.
Microkernels have been around for decades, but they went out of vogue in the late 70s(?) because they ran slower than a monolithic kernel. They're more robust, though, provided the core kernel is done right (and whatever people might say, MS kernels are generally pretty reasonable; it's the drivers and other crap that usually causes the BSOD) and computers these days are fast enough for the speed/stability tradeoff to be worth the shift to microkernels. This also lets them shift all driver code into Ring 1 and 2, ensuring that Ring 0 doesn't get tainted by anything that might bring down the system.
Microkernels are generally easier to test and debug too, so the quality of the kernel should be higher. And kernel updates can be installed and activated without rebooting, so there should be fewer 'Windows Update needs to reboot your computer' messages. Even Linux can't replace the running kernel in memory without shutting down apps.
Vista uses what they call a "hybrid" kernel architecture.
-
There has been only two public betas; Beta 2 and RC1. Whatever you got was internal build.
Nope, it was widely publicized. I got it from http://download.windowsvista.com/dl/preview/prerc1/en/x86/iso/vista_5536.16385.060821-1900_vista_rc1_x86fre_client-lr1cfre_en_dvd.iso