QuickTime .MOV + Toshiba + Vista = BSOD

Question Guy writes "Apple QuickTime is involved in a troubling problem that doesn't seem to be addressed by any of the major software and hardware manufacturers involved. On Toshiba machines, such as the Protege Tablet M400s, with Windows Vista installed, opening a locally stored QuickTime .MOV causes instant bluescreen. All other video functions seem to be working in other video playback types — even streaming .MOVs work — and there is little to no 'buzz' on the Net that might push any of the parties to investigate or to play nice together (Microsoft for Vista, Intel for the GMA945 chipset, Toshiba for their custom tablet software, Apple for QuickTime). Help, anyone?"

Defective by design

[Anonymous Coward]

An appropriate title for both Vista and Quicktime!

I think you answered your question already.

[HowIsMyDriving? (142335)]

In your question you stated that the Toshiba laptop runs custom tablet software. If all other configurations of Vista, the Intel Chipset, Quicktime, and other variables work fine, you have just eliminated them as possibilities but the Tablet software. More than likely there is some call within the tablet software doing with the display that interacts when a Mov. is trying to be played locally, which causes conflict. Also, why is this Slashdot worthy?

Re:I think you answered your question already.

[taoman1 (1050536)]

TFA concludes by blaming it on Apple. I'm no Apple fanboy, but I don't see that at all. Unless I am misreading TFA, everything worked fine until the patches and updates were installed. I would suggest those are the problem. If they were Tablet updates, that's where the blame lies. If they were Vista updates, then the problem is there. And i agree, this is a support call, not news on /.

Re:I think you answered your question already.

[Anonymous Coward]

We know that Apple is not the problem because an application should never be able to invoke a BSOD, no matter how poorly written.

Re:I think you answered your question already.

[Anonymous Coward]

They claimed it was impossible for an application to cause a BSOD so there couldn't be anything wrong with Mozilla.

OK, so Mozilla had a resource leak. Clearly there was also a kernel or driver bug, because a BSOD is a kernel crash.

In other words, they were both wrong

[istartedi (132515)]

An application shouldn't consume excessive resources.

If an application attempts to consume excessive resources, the OS should not allow that. Appropriate responses might include failing to provide the resource, or terminating the application. A BSOD terminates everything--plainly not the correct response.

Now, considering the .MOV+Toshiba+Vista situation... something in kernel space is plainly wrong. It might be MS code or Toshiba code. We don't know. Something in application space might be wrong too; but it makes sense to fix bugs in code that runs in the kernel first. Then, if the application "hangs" or triggers a more manageable exception (The little popup window that doesn't crash the whole OS, whatever they call that on Vista) then we know that the application had problems too. If that doesn't happen, then the application was innocent all along.

Re:I think you answered your question already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't a corner stone of "stable" and "reliability" in an modern OS the inability of any app to cause failure by sucking up all resources?

YES.

[hummassa (157160)]

If any client asks for more than its fair share of resources, DENY them to it. Then, and only then, this is a client's bug. If you ask for more and more of my resources and I keep giving them to you until I myself starve, it's MY problem, not yours.

"its not a bug, its a feature!"

[dknj (441802)]

um let me run this scenario by you. you're finishing up your long 226 legal brief in Microsoft word. you go to click file save, but the directory you are saving to has 400 files. windows does some internal file processing and starts eating up the final 10k of available physical memory. swapping begins to occur until your sound card that was playing your favorite midi throws an error because windows did not feed data in time. the sound card drive freaks out, and returns a failure to the midi app. the midi app, not prepared for this, starts an infinite loop eating all of your available memory. eventually you overflow the stack and your windowing system is hosed.

you shake the mouse and click repeatedly hoping to unfreeze the computer. you hit control alt delete, nothing happens. you reset the computer silently hoping word's autosave worked for once.

now, my question to you.. is the above story what you are implying is happening here? (answer this question honestly before you continue)

because that is what happened back in Windows 3.1. Since the creation of modern operating systems, we have learned to take advantage of advanced hardware and separate each application into its own memory space (see: Intro to Operating Systems at your local community college). Thus, a single application should NOT take down your entire system. If an application is causing a BSOD and there is no funky kernel-mode hardware access going on.. the fault is on the hardware or OS (to include drivers as well). Period.

If you wish to debate this, remember that I may have just found a way to compromise your system.

Re:"its not a bug, its a feature!"

[scsirob (246572)]

I do have mod points at this time, but parent is already at +5. This is a *very* insightful post indeed.

There is *NO* excuse, *NONE WHATSOEVER* that an operating system can have, to allow it to fail simply because an application does something wierd/wrong/illegal. An operating system is there to manage resources, and that includes protecting applications from another. A BSOD means a bug in the primary function of the O/S and is *CRITICAL*. It denies other applications their protection and it causes lost productivity. Stop using this O/S until the failures is explained and fixed.

Re:"its not a bug, its a feature!"

[jimicus (737525)]

At the risk of being filtered out, try compiling and running the following program. For best results, do it on a single-processor system:

#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>
void main(){
  for(;;){
    fork();
  }
}

RTFM ;-)

[hummassa (157160)]

At the risk of being filtered out, try compiling and running the following program. For best results, do it on a single-processor system:

#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>
void main(){
  for(;;){
    fork();
  }
}

I just did.

$ cd /tmp
$ xclip -o > um.c
$ gcc um.c
$ ulimit -u 200
$ ./a.out

waits some seconds, sees cpu graph in superkaramba reach 100%, waits some more, hits ^C

$

No kernel panic, no system hosing here, ok?

You are barking up the wrong tree.

[haraldm (643017)]

Still, a user space app should never be able to produce a BSOD, even if it is pushing the limits. It's the OSes job to keep apps from going haywire, no matter what. They use that stuff in medical devices, airplanes and space travel, forget? It's like Windows should never execute (!) a mail attachment only according to the MIME type without looking at the file itself: The single largest problem with trojans and worms. A design error is a design error.

Re:I think you answered your question already.

[suv4x4 (956391)]

Also, why is this Slashdot worthy?

Anything is.

Title error...

[Khaed (544779)]

Vista = BSOD

There, fixed the title for you. :)

Re:

[mgv (198488)]

Vista = BSOD

There, fixed the title for you. :)

Would it not read more like:

"A carefully crafted executable, under certain conditions may cause a denial of service attack"

Its not that quicktime crashes - that's apples fault. Its that the operating system goes down - definitely Microsoft's fault and problem. Although I presume its at least part hardware driver given the machine specific nature.

After all these years, it shouldn't be that easy to do. Vista was supposed to be the most secure operating system yet

Re:Title error...

[ivan256 (17499)]

What would be the Mac equivalent to a Tablet PC?

Axiotron ModBook

[mr_zorg (259994)]

Nothing from Apple yet, but you can always checkout the Axiotron ModBook [axiotron.com]... Sounds interesting.

Re:Title error...

[WhiteWolf666 (145211)]

And the iPhone, on which you _cannot_ install software, and which has limited data connectivity options is equivalent to a full blow Tablet PC how?

I'm an Apple fan, but come on.

Re:Title error...

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPhone-tuned features of OS X are far more appropriate to a slate form factor than desktop OS X or Windows Brick--excuse me, Tablet Edition.

When are people going to stop insisting that there is *a* right way to do things?

The iPhone form factor would be better if you want an ultra-portable computer you can carry around with you whereever you go. The Tablet PC form factor is better if you want a bigger screen, for instance (in order of what I think is least to most convincing) if you are giving a presentation and you want to be able to note on the screen, you want to read a ebook, or if you want to take notes in class.

Both would be very useful in their domain; neither is the be-all, end-all solution. People don't use PDAs instead of laptops or laptops instead of PDAs, and there's a reason for that.

Hastening

[SuperKendall (25149)]

Perhaps Microsoft will be in a little bit more of a hurry when the hackers figure out what is causing the BSOD from Vista and work it into the next custom malware?

Re:Title error...

[cronot (530669)]

Others have already said it, but I'm gonna say it again anyway: The possibility that Quicktime itself is causing the BSOD is infinitesimally next to zero - no userspace application should bring the OS down directly. Quicktime obviously is triggering the BSOD, but there isn't absolutely any "strong possibility that the issue is being caused by Apple software". The issue is most likely bad drivers - and the fact that the device uses a custom tablet isn't of any help. While Apple probably could work around the problem, they are the last party he should ask for it - The first, and most likely to get his problem resolved is Toshiba. Even if they can't to anything about it directly (i.e., the problem is on Vista), they should at least be able to put some pressure on Microsoft to get it done.

I do agree, however, that the suggestion the GP gave of dumping the device is overrated.

never gets old

[Anonymous Coward]

Help, anyone?

You can find a patch for this problem here [ubuntu.com].

Sounds like User Error?

[Rosyna (80334)]

It says "playing a .MOV file". A .mov (MooV) file is a container format for codecs. iTunes doesn't use a "QuickTime Player" it uses QuickTime.

It almost sounds like a particular driver or something is crashing when trying to do hardware acceleration of a particular codec (like H.264). The author seems like they're shooting bullets of blame in a wild and uncontrollable manner.

Probably Vista

[slughead (592713)]

The fact that it crashed was probably Apple's "bad", but the fact that it resulted in a BSOD is obviously Vista.

Maybe this has to do with the added layer of complexity (presumably for DRM) between the kernel and video-utilizing programs... or is that just for DirectX programs?

Re:

[LighterShadeOfBlack (1011407)]

The fact that it crashed was probably Apple's "bad", but the fact that it resulted in a BSOD is obviously Vista.

Maybe this has to do with the added layer of complexity (presumably for DRM) between the kernel and video-utilizing programs... or is that just for DirectX programs?

Or maybe it's sunspots or mobile phones. Or maybe it's a deliberate Microsoft plot to make Apple look bad.

I know, let's randomly speculate some more.

Has apple updated QT yet?

[peragrin (659227)]

last I knew apple hadn't updated quicktime or itunes, for Vista. So people are running into problems with a heavily drm'd OS not properly running applications that weren't designed to run on it.

should i be surprised?

Certainly not Apple's fault

[evilviper (135110)]

From TFA:

or the problem could in fact be Apple's for something in the QuickTime code that's at fault.

No, it couldn't... If you're running as an unprivileged user, the software you run shouldn't possibly be able to crash your OS.

Drivers can, and bugs in the OS can. User-run programs can only (accidentally) trigger one of those... in which case, that's a DoS exploit in the system.

Re:

[Animats (122034)]

Drivers can, and bugs in the OS can. User-run programs can only (accidentally) trigger one of those...

If only. The way Microsoft does DRM [microsoft.com], much of audio and video processing takes place in kernel space.

Seams Im not alone.

[IconKing (738117)]

I got a Toshiba Protege M400 about a mont ago. And I have had this problem consitantly. Since I watch alot of Video Podcast using iTunes. I have searched the web for solutions to tis problem and have gotten noware. Hopefully now that it made slashdot somthing will get done about it.

No shock - Vista's #1 goal is DRM. Not usability.

[gsfprez (27403)]

I installed Vista on my MacPro - in 12 minutes, i had a successfully BSOD'd Vista by playing a standard DiVX 6.0 file on Vista. (yesssss... i installed the drivers for everything)

I think (i do not know - so back off, i'm guessing) that there is some kind of problem with Vista and video... at least, i'm seeing a trend.

Considering the amount of work Microsoft put into preventing people from playing (assumedly pirated) video, I don't think its much of a strech to believe that its much harder for developers to make video playback software. I know that i read a very long article that talked about video card compliance and every 30ms being polled by the OS or some such bullshit, but i don't recall the link. But it was quite long, very extensive, and seemed to me that Vista's goal was not to provide a system which would foster video content creation - but rather, just the opposite.

its rather sad, actually. Microsoft/Adobe and MS/AVID had the makings of at least pitiful competition for Apple/Apple & Apple/Avid... (Apple/Adobe? Yeah, not so much any more after NAB). I actually LIKE competition, because it means that Apple and their developers actually have to work to make better products.

With all of the pain that's obivously involved with working HD video (which inclueds VIEWING IT) on Vista, there won't be much competition. If Vista is a shitty at video work as its looking to be, i suspect that Apple will be able to kick back on the beach with a mai-tai and not have to evern try... i mean, HD playback is 100% zero effort (assuming you aren't trying to do it on a PowerBook 520c) in Mac OS X - there's no DRM invovled whatsoever (except for BR and HDDVDs).... and the video cards Just Work(TM), and Quicktime just works, and VLC just works and DIVX just works.... etc.

sucks to have your workflow based upon a product that is EOL in 7 months (Windows XP + ___________). Personally, i don't care. I've long stopped caring about the abuse people that use Windows for video work put themselves thru... sure, Windows did some things faster back in the day, but all of that is totally gone now, isn't it?

Now, its all about the OS.

Re:No shock - Vista's #1 goal is DRM. Not usabilit

[robbiethefett (1047640)]

i have a small home-based audio recording studio, and i'm becoming more involved in the whole computer music scene. from what i gather, quite a large number of studios have decided to switch entirely to Mac for production environments. i guess vista stepped on so many toes that a lot of shops that run XP have been migrating to Macs and plan to be exclusively apple shops, even before XP's end of life. for some reason, professionals seem to be pissed off that MS wants to control what they do with their own data.. can't imagine why.

article (Vista - longest suicide note in history):

[toby (759)]

I know that i read a very long article that talked about video card compliance and every 30ms being polled by the OS or some such bullshit

The article you probably mean is Peter Gutmann's A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection [auckland.ac.nz], which memorably coined the phrase,

The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history

At least, we can hope.

oh i beg to differ..

[plasmacutter (901737)]

Apple software for Windows has always sucked rocks

back in the day (circa 2002) i was working with a cruddy old machine and wanted to watch some divx on it.. but wmp kept stuttering.. so i installed quicktime and used it.. it used 20% less resources and its dependability was the first of many factors which got me to switch to mac.

that said, quicktime 7 was a major step down from 6.x because they broke the caching (making it stutter even on osX), but that has nothing to do with the platform it runs on.

kind of rediculous

[sentientbrendan (316150)]

that he blames quicktime for a BSOD...

Nothing but a bad driver, bad hardware, or a *bad kernel* can cause a BSOD (read kernel panic). It doesn't matter that other movie players don't cause it. If the driver's and kernel didn't have a bug, it would be impossible for *any* userspace application, quicktime or otherwise, to cause a kernel panic.

Quicktime isn't the greatest movie player ever... but it couldn't possibly be at the root of this problem. It is clearly simply exposing an underlying problem.

Recent QuickTime updates the cause?

[Aphrika (756248)]

I must say that I've seen a spate of strange crashes and stuff with the last few point updates to QuickTime on both Macs and PCs. The last update solved a few of them, but in my current line of work (which is IT sysadmin for a media company with 200+ machines) QuickTime functioning properly is vital to business.

First port of call would be QuickTime itself. As there are 'known issues' with iTunes and Vista, and we know that QuickTime and iTunes integrate pretty closely, I'd uninstall the iTunes/Quicktime install and try installing just the standalone player. There could be iTunes hooks into QuickTime that might be breaking something. It also makes sure you've got the most recent QuickTime install.

This has fixed a few of the problems I've seen over the past few months.

Secondly, I'd try a variety of different .mov files. There's a chance it could be an issue with your machine and specific encoding method that certain types of .mov files use. Thirdly, I'd try some other media files in it, like mp4 video or H.264. These can also be played back in other players and success or failure would point you in the direction of whether it's QuickTime or something deeper - such as a graphics driver - at fault.

Thirdly, I'd think back and ask yourself if you've seen any other odd graphic behaviour on your PC recently. That might indicate a driver issue. Make usre in cases like this that you're using the manufacturer approved drivers.

Fourthly, I'd look at downloading Microsoft's Application Compatibility Tools and seeing whether there's anything on your machine that doesn't run under Vista. Specifically look out for items with a graphical angle such as screen managers etc.

A puzzler indeed

[BrianPan (786919)]

> from the puzzler dept.

The part that's puzzling is why we need to summon all the readers of the Slashdot front page to fix this guy's laptop.

BS o' D?

[NJVil (154697)]

It's a new Vista feature reminding you to switch to Windows Media Player.

All of our work machines have this problem...

[robson (60067)]

...and we run Windows XP, not Vista.

Any attempt to watch a Quicktime file from a local drive results in problems (usually an instant bluescreen, but sometimes general breakage -- taskbar not responding, apps not closing when ordered, menus not responding, that sort of thing).

Viewing a movie that exists elsewhere on the network is fine. Viewing a movie from the Internet still breaks things, presumably because it's still getting cached to the local drive.

They're not brand-name computers, but they were all put together by the same place, presumably with similar specs. Nobody's dug into it too deeply, we've just gotten used to moving all *.mov files to a network drive before viewing. :)

RALink Chipset + Ubuntu + Network Manager= Nothing

[LighterShadeOfBlack (1011407)]

So my wireless USB dongle stopped working when I upgraded to Ubuntu 7.04. It seems Network Manager doesn't like the rt73usb driver, or just about any RALink driver judging by the Ubuntu Forums. Help, anyone?

What, you mean /. isn't the place to post bug reports? Could've fooled me...

Should be pretty easy

[overshoot (39700)]

With enough eyes and all that.

Someone post the source code to the OS, drivers, and player and we'll have a look.

Oh, wait ...

The Lotus effect

[flyingfsck (986395)]

Vista ain't done, till QuickTime won't run.

Reminds me of Toshiba + Symantec products..

[csirac (574795)]

Running PcAnywhere on your XP laptop that happens to be a Toshiba, and apparently in combination with a Symantec AV product (NAV IIRC) would result in a guranteed blue screen on every shutdown.

Had never seen that before with this software combination on any laptop except some Toshibas at work back in the day.

Nearest KB article I could find on Symantec was 2003112516321112, but it's only available via Google cache at http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:FBy7QXRHzIIJ:s ervice1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/pca.nsf/1ab3f998698d6 46f88256f48005b9e71/b998f8fb40c5dc3988256dea000204 6d%3FOpenDocument+site:symantec.com+toshiba+shutdo wn+pcanywhere&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=au&client=fire fox-a [72.14.253.104]

Where's the memory dump?

[Sergeant Beavis (558225)]

Disclaimer: I USED to work at Microsoft and I now own a Mac.

Here is an example of an idiot trying to look smart. Have you bothered to have someone look at the memory dump? What was the stop code? Did you check the event logs?

The fact is, it could be ANY of the three things mentioned or NONE of them. It could be an anti virus filter driver. It could be a memory access violation in Kernel Mode memory. It could have absolutely nothing to do with Vista or QT or even the Toshiba's drivers. It could be that the author is just stupid.

I'm leaning in the direction that this author is simply ignorant but since he felt he should write an article and place blame with minimal evidence to support his claim, he falls solidly in the stupid category.

The only fact that the author has presented is that he had a BSOD when using QT on Vista on Toshiba hardware when playing a local file. That only gives you suspects. A lawyer should know better. I've had occasions where customers swore up and down that one product was causing a BSOD and the memory dump pointed squarely at another product. Rarely (on XP) did I ever see a memory dump that actually pointed the finger at Windows. More often than not, I've seen memory dumps caused by filter drivers used by anti virus.

Perhaps Mr Fishkin should write more about being a lawyer because he damn well doesn't know much about computers.

Problem SOLVED! Re:Where's the memory dump?

[Question Guy (306426)]

Aloha everyone,

I'm out here and thanks in part to Slashdot, my M400 tablet is playing quicktime movies like a champ now :)
The rant below aside, I DO very much appreciate the community thought that went into this, the response was great and that seems to have gotten the attention of Toshiba, which has issued a new RAID driver.

So, for whatever reason I still don't understand, Quicktime was accessing hard drives , those controlled by the SATA RAID controller in the laptop AND the ones hooked up by USB (external drives)in such a different way that the computer BSOD'ed every time.
I don't pretend to understand it fully, I just knew from the start that it was some fundamental level of tinkering I couldn't do on my own.

A hearty thanks to everyone who offered advice, called me or the author an idiot, or delved deeper into information that couldn't have been contained in the paltry few sentances I wrote for the story submission. hehe. I went out to lunch to buy some RAM, and there were 200 posts, so I'm sorry I wasn't more involved in giving MORE information. I know that everyone needed it, but I missed the window on timing, I think... who knew it would get accepted and start up such a fire-storm of responses?
It reminds me of that maxim "Whe you assume, you make an ass out of u and me. :) Of course, that in part was the point, right?
Submit a vexing problem to Slashdot, give just enough information for people to identify it and hope and pray that someone smart, informed, kind slashdotter would know the answer when all the google queries in the world, tech support hours wasted and dead end hunches didn't get me anywhere.

Hooray for everyone!

Well, I know what caused the bug...

[ZackSchil (560462)]

Space must have collapsed into its self due to too much terrible design being in the same place at the same time. A Toshiba laptop + Quicktime for Windows + Microsoft Vista?! This guy is lucky to be alive.

Re:

[wellingj (1030460)]

I think you are missing the point.... not much *IS* compatible with Vista.
wow... what a role reversal with Linux...
next thing you know my dad is going to make me cookies and my mom will make me build a fence...

Update your player.

[DrYak (748999)]

except the format in question... VLC can't play most modern quicktime movies.

You know that there has been a few update since version 0.01, don't you ? ;-)

Seriously, almost any modern MOV file either uses standard MPEG 4 (MPEG-4 SP/H263 and AVC/H264) or some variation of (Sorenson is a derivative of H264). The former is a standard, the later was successfully reverse-engineered and implemented in FFmpeg a couple of years ago.
Even the latest WMV compression formats are currently being implemented into FFmpeg and thus available to VLC.

RealVideo is pretty much everything that is still in use today and not supported by VLC. Specially since the advent of video Podcasts, PSP and cameraphones, there's a strong nove toward standardizing on non proprietary codecs like the various MPEG4.

Re:

[Goaway (82658)]

Welcome out of the nineties.

MPEG-4 is Quicktime. It doesn't get much more standardized than that.

Re:Say what?

[guruevi (827432)]

He is one of the two guys that are running Vista.