Gates Provides Windows Crash Statistic 984
cybercuzco writes "In an otherwise innocuous article at they NYT (FRRYYY) Bill Gates says that according to error reporting software in windows, 5% of all windows installations crash two or more times every day. Gates goes on to state that Microsoft is looking at charging for some of its software updates that it now distributes for free."
More amunition for Linux fans (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyhow, at least people will be able to reference this article when they boast about their Linux stability
Charging for updates .... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:skewed statistics. (Score:3, Interesting)
P.S This never happens on my Win2K workstation.
Win2K (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:skewed statistics. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:skewed statistics. (Score:2, Interesting)
Obviously in normal enviroments you will reboot more frequently to apply patches/service packs, but when the machine is in a isolated enviroment like this there is no need.
Re:So? (Score:3, Interesting)
Good point.
I use Opera, not IE as my web browser. And, XP rarely crashes on me. Sure, the occasional app crashes, but I've not has a "the system is locked" crash since I QUIT using IE as a browser...
I bet this number includes all Windows versions (Score:2, Interesting)
As for NT, Win2k and WinXP, I'd expect them to crash much less frequently. In fact, I can't even remember Win2k or XP ever BSODing on me "out of the blue" and I do quite a bit of development on them at work. I think a great majority of BSODs on these systems happens due to a faulty hardware (like RAM), or crappy drivers. So, mod me down all you want, but MS got over BSOD hurdle starting Win2K.
That is not to say that there are no stability issues. I bet if I were to count number of times I had to reboot my system after:
a. Applying security update
b. Installing some seemingly innocuous application
c. Having my system become unbearably slow after copying/moving/deleting a large number of files.
d. Having my system go nuts with IE windows coming up dead, apps failing or taking forever to start, windows not repainting properly, etc.
those 5% could easily double.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:5% seems a bit low... (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, yeah, I could see not reporting a pirated copy of Photoshop or something. But come on people... they are fixing hundreds of bugs a year, help them identify which ones are the important ones.
And windows will ask if you want to send a non-hardware related report if the OS died for non-hardware related issues (I had it ask just the other day if I wanted to report a spontanious reboot. After I said yes, it discovered that Matrox had already patched it's drivers for this problem, and offered to download the fix).
I know, I know... this is Slashdot. Everyone's going to mark me a Troll. And maybe I deserve it for delivering the message in such a vitriolic manner. But the truth remains: If you want Windows to improve, you actually have to take part in the process.
It's all in how you spin the language (Score:3, Interesting)
Granted, the word "bugfixes" is not used. However, we all know that Microsoft typically does not refer to bug fixes as bug fixes. They call them "updates" or "Service Packs" or something similar, but never "bug fixes."
However, if you read the description of what these updates are (by reading the descriptions when you point your browser at the Windows Update site [microsoft.com], which are provided before you actually install the updates), you would see that most of what they are is a bunch of bug fixes with perhaps a few minor feature upgrades thrown in.
Am I the only person who remembers that Windows 2000 shipped with tens of thousands of known bugs? I'm tired of the attitude some people have that it's OK to ship buggy software as long as there are no show stopper bugs. Because the definition of a "show stopper" can be subjective, and bugs that aren't show stoppers can still be highly aggravating and productivity-sapping.
So let's see. What software does Microsoft give away for free? Microsoft Money and Internet Explorer, sure, but what else? DirectX (an API that most game developers rely on heavily), the
The article talks about how, due to Longhorn's delay (availability in 2005 or later), "important features and updates to Windows XP would be added" prior to Longhorn's release. Clearly, Microsoft needs a revenue generator prior to 2005 in the OS space. Assuming sales for new OS licenses are going to be flat or in decline during the next year, it seems like they have little choice. About half their revenue comes from OS software. (The other half comes from Office, mainly.)
I mean, I suppose Microsoft could just suck it up for a year or two, but investors and industry pundits wouldn't take that very well, hence my statement that they have little choice in their course of action.
Re:skewed statistics. (Score:2, Interesting)
Or is there something they arent telling us.....
Re:Could be an advertisement for MSFT scalability (Score:3, Interesting)
It also does not take into account businesses like ours that reboot ALL the NT Webservers once a day to keep them from falling over.
FWIW, they are being replace by a clump of SUN's.
Re:Period, Exclaimation, Question Mark...? (Score:2, Interesting)
1) Hardware problems: do we count crashes from buggy hardware? And if we don't, what about situations where the kernel could work around the hardware? Do we count those?
2) User stupidity: do we count users doing stupid things, such as deleting
3) Modules: Do we count crashes in third-party modules, like the nvidia drivers? Do we count them only if they bring down the whole system?
The same type of questions could be asked for Windows, and in fact, probably more could be asked. Windows has quite a few vendor-written drivers, and they can crash. Are those counted?
Anyone can write a program that crashes often - this should not reflect upon the quality of the OS. But where do we start counting crashes as being detrimental to the OS?
I haven't seen too many crashes on other people's computers running Windows XP or 2000 (much less than with Windows 98!), but I have seen more than on my Linux machines, at least if you remove crashes from my CVS builds, unstable kernels, etc. I tend not to have any crashes at the kernel, module, or X level at all.
Insane... (Score:2, Interesting)
Fatal flaw in this Business Strategy (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:5, Interesting)
Think of Jaguar as OS X v2.0 and Panther as OS X v3.0 and you'll be all right. That makes the current OS version 2.6.
WinXP was only a point release to the "kernel" but XP's userland is (supposedly) significantly differnet. Sadly, Win2K's userland was only really needed a point release, and the kernel needed a thorough overhaul [2]
[1] I just noticed (pause for laughter) that the current technologies [apple.com] page is now highlighting Applescript [apple.com] as a top-level component of the OS, on the same conceptual level as Aqua. Imagine that, an OS that considers scripting and automation to be equally as important as the GUI. That's a nice balance.
[2] Admittedly only in comparison to operating systems which I'd consider well-designed, which would be almost anything.
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:3, Interesting)
Mr. Gates acknowledged today that the company's error reporting service indicated that 5 percent of all Windows-based computers now crash more than twice each day.
Anyways, i would like to know which percent crashes "only" once each day or once every 2 days... my guess: 50%
You don't know what you don't know (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to put too fine a point on it, but what makes you think there aren't? Are you an expert at brick laying? I suspect the answer is no. I'm not trying to insult you. I've just learned the hard way that it is dangerous to claim something is easy that you don't really understand.
Harder than anything else in the physical world
Again, I would caution you to be careful about such claims. I'll concur that programming is really, really hard to do well. Lord knows I've tried. But is it the hardest thing in the world? My guess is no. I've done a bunch of programming and other engineering and you know what? The technical stuff is hard but no where near as hard as the people stuff. Trying to manage a team of people towards some productive goal is usually the hardest part of my job. And I'm not even particularly introverted or shy. The phrase "herding cats" comes to mind...
Or if you want a more technical example, how about medicine? The human body is an unbelievably complex entity which we understand far less about than we do digital computers. Do you think programming is harder than medicine? At least you have 30 ways to solve a problem. There are diseases for which we don't even have names, much less a cure. Be glad that your job gives you so many ways to help solve your customer's problems. Doctors often don't have that luxury.
Anyway the point is that there are a lot of activities that are really challenging. Please don't assume that just because what you do is hard, that everything else must be easy. It just ain't so.
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:2, Interesting)
I think Bill would be the first one to quietly ignore an application seg fault (especially third party) or whatever.
Ways to lay bricks. (Score:2, Interesting)
Can you imagine if there were thirty different ways to lay bricks?
A quick google search for "brick bond" gives 161000 results.
Some of the choices are:
stretcher bond
Flemish bond
English bond
American
English garden wall bond
rat trap (or Chinese) bond
Sussex bond
header bond.
Now, I am not a mason, so if I can find this many choices in a 3 minute search, there are probably more than 30 ways to lay bricks. Furthermore, I suggest to you that editing a brick wall is much more difficult than editing software.
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:5, Interesting)
The true story (Score:4, Interesting)
The interesting thing, of course, is that so few bugs have been found. Imagine if M$ had this policy!
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:3, Interesting)
More like FreeBSD is WAY TOO MUCH for the average user. I'm talking somebody without a geek guardian angel installing / configuring / administering the machine. If you know a thing or two, great, but I can't see myself calling mom and saying "Yeah, Mom, just use rawrite.exe in the dos window to write the two boot floppies, boot off of them, and down 4.8 RELEASE, as I think you'd like the jail (8) command that they finally backported." My Mom knows how to use her computer now, and I am extremely proud of her (I just convinced her to start outputting in PDF instead of MS proprietary formats) but five years ago she was truly frightened of them. I know many people who are this way now. Can you see anyone but perhaps the 3% even making a boot floppy and installing FreeBSD over the net?
I love FreeBSD. It's absolutely beautiful. However, many people look at it and say "What can you DO with it?" They have to find out for themselves.
Re:Cash for updates? (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't by any means think Windows is reliable, I'm just saying that application errors are a strange way to guage OS stability.
Yes, but the difference is that when Konqueror crashes, it doesn't take the complete system with his. If on the Windows platform iexplorer.exe crashes, it's most likely your system will hang, leaving you no choice but to reboot. In Linux the worst case is that KDE crashes if Konqueror crashes (although I never experienced this), which leaves the system operating. I experienced just a few Konqueror crashes, and it never got worse than losing my open Konqueror windows.
So yes, I do think application errors are a way to guage OS stability.
Some Facts for Everyone (Score:3, Interesting)
First off, there is quite a bit of confusion about application crashes vs. operating system crashes. While I do not know what Gates was referring to when he mentioned the 5% number, I'm assuming it's an operating system crash.
Application crashes are caused when an application causes an exception and does not handle that exception. (Most frequently, an access violation, error code 0xc0000005.) Ultimately, if the OS cannot find another exception handler that the app has put into place, the operating system invokes the default debugger as the last-chance exception handler. Typically, this exception handler is Dr. Watson (drwtsn32.exe), which will dump the process' address space to the user.dmp file.
The currently installed default debugger (drwtsn32 can be replaced using the aedebug registry value) will trap all unhandled *user mode* exceptions.
Unhandled *kernel mode* exceptions cause KeBugCheckEx() to be called, which is the function that throws the blue screen of death, and writes a memory.dmp to disk (if configured) and reboots the system (if configured). The machine may also be configured to report the bugcheck by sending a 64K minidump to microsoft's OCA site when the machine reboots.
I routinely examine memory dumps to determine the causes of Windows blue screen crashes.
I can tell you with absolute certainty that >90% of the blue screens I examine are caused by non-Microsoft device drivers. When a user installs code into kernel mode, there's nothing the OS can do to prevent that code from taking down the system.
Antivirus software, remote control software, realtime disk mirroring software, and hardware device drivers all install in kernel mode. (Want a list of device drivers running on your system? Run pstat.exe from the Resource Kit and examine the last section of the output.)
Yes, there are many known blue screens caused by MSFT software. To date, Microsoft has done an excellent job of fixing these problems, in my opinion. I have personally witnessed MSFT creating fixes for newly discovered bluescreen bugs in less than a week. (That's less than a week between MSFT getting the call about a blue screen, analyzing the dump, determining the cause of the problem, and delivering a fix to the customer.)
I cannot comment on Microsoft's future plans, since I do not know what they are. But in my opinion, Microsoft has done an excellent job of fixing blue screens caused by its products. And as I've said: the vast, vast majority of blue screens on Windows are not caused by Microsoft code. You cannot blame Microsoft for a device driver written by another vendor that does something that is explicitly illegal (according to the DDK) which therefore brings down the system. (Is it the cop's fault when you're pulled over for a speeding ticket?)
Microsoft's primary problem here, in my opinion, is that MSFT is automatically blamed for all blue screens, when in fact only a tiny percentage of BSODs are actually caused by Microsoft code. If Microsoft could close the loop on OCA and report to the users the cause of their crashes more frequently, and users could begin to appreciate how few blue screens really are caused by Microsoft code, I think the collective opinion of Windows' stability would change greatly.
Just to add value to this post, here are some common bugchecks caused by software. Any kernel mode code can cause these bugchecks:
STOP 0x0000000A (0x0A)
STOP 0x1E
STOP 0x50
STOP 0x7F
STOP 0x7E
STOP 0x8E
And hardware bugchecks:
STOP 0x9C (replace your CPU)
STOP 0x1A (replace your RAM)
STOP 0x4E (replace your RAM)
STOP 0x77 (examine your hard drive system)
STOP 0x7A (examine your hard drive system)
Any STOP code that begins with 0xc....... indicates some kind of environment problem, usually you get these during bootup.
The largest cause of bugs may be complexity. (Score:3, Interesting)
The myth that complexity is only achieved through complicated design is pervasive in computer programming, typified in Windows, and becoming more prevalant in Linux applications as Gnome and KDE become the standards.
The UNIX operating system was highly complex even in the days when it was dominated by small programs that were designed with the The Unix Philosophy [cbbrowne.com]. Small programs that did one thing well were the rule and complexity was achieved by utilizing clean well documented interfaces, standard data storage formats (ASCII), and non-captive UIs. The result is that most bugs can be tracked down to a specific small program that can either be fixed relatively quickly by the maintainer, or be replaced with one of a number of equivalent programs (either permanantly, or until the bug is found and fixed).
Windows design is mostly large programs that try to do everything for themselves, although they do share library functions. The result is huge masses of code that can effectively hide bugs indefinately (shatter [ntu.edu.au]), cannot be replaced with another program without breaking the OS (integration), and that the company [microsoft.com] seems to think of as "not our problem" [tombom.co.uk].
The issue I have with the desktop environments is that they seem to be following in the footsteps of Windows design, creating a tangled mess of (what should be) unecessary dependancies, huge libraries, and code that no one person is inheirently familiar with. As yet, I am unaware of any security problems inherent in either Gnome or KDE, but I do consider it a bug that installing a spreadsheet [gnome.org] requires also requires a sound library to work properly.
Complex ends can be achieved through simple means and complex programs or OS do not need to be complicated.