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Bug Microsoft Operating Systems Software Windows

Microsoft Denies Windows 7 "Showstopper Bug" 241

Posted by kdawson from the show-must-go-on dept.
Barence writes "Windows chief Steven Sinofsky has taken the unusual step of responding in the comments of a blog posting that claimed Windows 7 was suffering from a potential 'showstopper bug'. Stories had been sweeping the Internet that using the chkdsk.exe utility on a second hard disk would lead to a massive memory leak bringing the operating system to its knees in seconds. Responding to a blog post titled 'Critical Bug in Windows 7 RTM,' Sinofsky wrote: 'While we appreciate the drama of "critical bug" and then the pickup of "showstopper" that I've seen, we might take a step back and realize that this might not have that defcon level.' He signs off with the words: 'deep breath.'"
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Microsoft Denies Windows 7 "Showstopper Bug" More

Microsoft Denies Windows 7 "Showstopper Bug"

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  • RAM optimization (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sopssa ( 1498795 ) * <sopssa@email.com> on Friday August 07, 2009 @11:33AM (#28986529) Journal

    I wonder how this obviously one-sided summary even got posted -- it just sounds like a calling for bashing from people who dont read the article. Here's another snippet from Steven's response:

    We had one beta report on the memory usage, but that was resolved by design since we actually did design it to use more memory. But the design was to use more memory on purpose to speed things up, but never unbounded â" we requset the available memory and operate within that leaving at least 50M of physical memory. Our assumption was that using /r means your disk is such that you would prefer to get the repair done and over with rather than keep working.

    And it does make sense for two reasons:
    1) Windows has to lock the drive anyways, so its better to get it done fast.
    2) You CAN spend RAM. If the whole RAM isn't used, you're just wasting it. In this case chkdsk.exe will use dynamically what there is left, making the process faster. How is this a bad thing?

    Rather than a bug or memory leak, this seems like an optimization.

    • Re:RAM optimization (Score:5, Informative)

      by FatAlb3rt ( 533682 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @11:37AM (#28986567) Homepage

      Optimizations aren't supposed to crash the computer [bluescreenofdeath.org].

      The original report I read was full of drama, too much IMHO, and the bug could be fixed in the first service update.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        According to your link, the bug is already fixed. Apparently an incompatibility with chip set drivers for which new drivers are available that remove the possibility of the crash.

      • Re:RAM optimization (Score:5, Informative)

        by sycotic ( 26352 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @11:42AM (#28986659) Homepage

        Have a read of this: http://www.bluescreenofdeath.org/?p=94#comment-134 [bluescreenofdeath.org]

         

        UPDATE:
        After emailing back and forth with the VP Sinofsky, it was found that the chkdsk /r tool is not at fault here. It was simply a chipset controller issue. Please update you chipset drivers to the current driver from your motherboard manufacturer. I did mine, and this fixed the issue. Yes it still uses alot of physical memory, because your checking for physical damage, and errors on the Harddrive your testing. Iâ(TM)m currently completed the chkdsk scan with no BSODâ(TM)s or computer sluggishness. Feel free to do this and try it for yourselves. Again, there is no Bug.
        Thanks all.

        • Re:RAM optimization (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07, 2009 @12:13PM (#28987045)

          Excerpt from parent should be added as an update to the summary.

        • The issue with updates to drivers for Vista became a big issue (and assuming Vista 7 is newer) I would suspect there will be many issues with finding updates to those chipsets.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          This obsession with memory usage is silly.

          RAM is very, very cheap now, less than £10 a gigabyte. I configure my software to use lots of RAM, because I prefer a fast computer to one with lots of free memory.

      • Ya, and the only thing we see on that blog is a screenshot of how much memory chkdsk is using. Then he claims it crashes..

        Sorry if I don't just blindly believe everything on the internet.

    • Re:RAM optimization (Score:5, Insightful)

      by GreenEnvy22 ( 1046790 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @11:38AM (#28986577)
      Agreed, this is a non issue, or at worst, a very tiny issue. For the very tiny amount of people out there that will run "Chkdsk -r" on a secondary partition, they may see almost all their ram used up while it is scanning the disk. If they have prexisting hardware or software glitches, it might blue screen on them. For the 90% of consumers who would never run chkdsk, and who don't have more then one parition, this is a complete non-issue.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by geekoid ( 135745 )

        No, it's not tiny, in fact it could be a huge issue; however this is a chip set problem, not a win 7 problem.

      • Re:RAM optimization (Score:5, Interesting)

        by HermMunster ( 972336 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @12:57PM (#28987591)

        I regularly put customer's hard drives into a different computer as a secondary drive and run chkdsk. Your math sort of makes it seem like 4-5% of a market isn't a lot to account for, yet that 4-5% means in terms of the OS market hundreds of millions of users. Should we let you take those support calls?

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Zancarius ( 414244 )

          Your math sort of makes it seem like 4-5% of a market isn't a lot to account for, yet that 4-5% means in terms of the OS market hundreds of millions of users.

          I believe the OP said this:

          For the 90% of consumers who would never run chkdsk, and who don't have more then one parition, this is a complete non-issue.

          So really, it would be 10%. I sincerely doubt, however, that this chkdsk issue would affect more than an incredibly small number of systems. In other words, the grandparent is right. It's a non-issue.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by bonch ( 38532 )

        People need to stop thinking the crash is only caused by Chkdsk. It's also caused by the built-in disk check utility of Explorer.

    • Re:RAM optimization (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Nimey ( 114278 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @11:41AM (#28986655) Homepage Journal

      Haven't read many kdawson stories?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      2) You CAN spend RAM. If the whole RAM isn't used, you're just wasting it. In this case chkdsk.exe will use dynamically what there is left, making the process faster. How is this a bad thing?

      This sounds a lot like the Outlook 2007 discussion on Vista (and some reports on XP). Vista has "advanced memory management" and Outlook "continually asks for RAM, as long as some is available". The result? Outlook allocates ~700M, according to the Task Manager process list, while the Physical Memory free (on a 3G system) reports 6% free. Closing Outlook brings the ram free percentage up to %60. Some MS MVP said just what you said "The RAM is available, so Outlook uses it and the program responds faster, th

      • Re:RAM optimization (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Your.Master ( 1088569 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @11:59AM (#28986857)

        Hey, but it's nothing like that. Using all of your RAM to check a disk for damage and repair it in response to a user's specific request is not like having Outlook open in the background.

      • Re:RAM optimization (Score:4, Interesting)

        by rabbit994 ( 686936 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @01:04PM (#28987675)

        Actually isn't not unresponsive, Outlook will give up RAM quite happily and it's not opening 3 emails, it's keeping your entire PST/OST loaded into RAM so you don't bitch and complain when selecting different emails is "slow to load". Therefore if you have big .PST/OST expect for it to use alot of RAM.

        However, I'm sitting on Windows 7 Ultimate x64 with 6GB of RAM and Outlook is using 200MB total including what's committed for use and what's it happily taking because it can. I have 457MB .OST (Exchange cached file) so wanting to load half of it's not unreasonable. Linux uses similar memory management system and I don't hear alot of complaining about it.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by m.ducharme ( 1082683 )

          I missed the part where having all your e-mail in one big file is a good thing. I've never had any problems with "slow to load" e-mails, whether I was using an offline e-mail client or being served e-mails from a webmail address. What exactly is so good about the PST/OST file that it's worth keeping EVERYTHING in RAM for? (I'm not being entirely sarcastic here, if there's a good reason for this, I'd like to know it).

        • Re:RAM optimization (Score:4, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07, 2009 @01:33PM (#28988037)

          "isn't not unresponsive"

          Congratulations! You have plumbed a new depth in illiteracy. That's a triple negative. Did you really mean responsive or unresponsive?

      • Re:RAM optimization (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Blakey Rat ( 99501 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @02:35PM (#28988873)

        This is utter bullshit:

        This sounds a lot like the Outlook 2007 discussion on Vista (and some reports on XP). Vista has "advanced memory management" and Outlook "continually asks for RAM, as long as some is available". The result? Outlook allocates ~700M, according to the Task Manager process list, while the Physical Memory free (on a 3G system) reports 6% free. Closing Outlook brings the ram free percentage up to %60. Some MS MVP said just what you said "The RAM is available, so Outlook uses it and the program responds faster, that's a good thing", completely disregarding the fact that the computer is near unresponsive to everything else. A program should never take RAM "because it's available", it should take it "because it's needed". Using over 2G of RAM to open 3 emails is absurd, using 1G for texture and sound data is more reasonable.

        I'm running Outlook 2007 on Vista right now this instant, and it's using 92MB of RAM. Physical memory free = 57%.

        Even if Outlook was using all but 6% of free RAM, why would that necessarily make your system "unresponsive to everything else?" 6% of RAM is plenty to keep your machine responsive, assuming it has a gig or more in it.

        And this statement:

        A program should never take RAM "because it's available", it should take it "because it's needed".

        Is doubly-retarded. RAM takes time to fill, yet takes no time to empty. Therefore, all software should fill as much RAM as feasible to make itself more responsive to the user. RAM isn't some physical object you "take away" from something else-- if Outlook allocates RAM than another process needs, the OS just overwrites it as needed.

    • I really really hate referencing Apple but guess what? Apple does allow insane amounts of caching in fsck_hfs but for some reason (!) it defaults to comical low , something like no cache.

      http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/fsck_hfs.8.html [apple.com] (-c argument)

      Why? Because system already has disk corruption issue, it could be also related to memory corruption. Also, thing runs on journaled volume with huge help from journal file. One should also admit how clever they hide it from

    • "will use dynamically"

      that's fine if the ideal dynamic utilization has zero overhead. So if I need it for something, I get it back without delay. In practice, if it adds anything to my system's ability to allocate whatever memory I need to open something else, then it sucks.

    • Some drama llama found a potential problem, posted to a blog, upset the idiots who don't know any better, and has been proven to be an ass. Nothing more to see here, move along, get off my lawn.

    • The real issue: Some people are running scared (Score:4, Insightful)

      by benjymouse ( 756774 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @03:04PM (#28989249)
      First a few facts
      1. chkdsk.exe is a disk checking and file-system repair tool. Most users will never know about it.
      2. The chkdsk functionality kan be invoked through Windows Explorer as well. Some users will find this tool if they deliberately are looking for it.
      3. chkdsk.exe with the /r oprion (and *only* with the /r option) has been designed to allocate most of the available physical memory, but always leave at least 50M free. This is not a memory leak. It was a deliberate decision because using more memory will dramatically speed up the surface verification/repair process. Note, it will allocate from available memory, i.e. already allocated memory will not be forced out into paged/virtual memory. If this was a leak the allocation would go on and on, cause more and more swapping until the system trashed itself to death. But it's not. The system remains responsive and the memory is freed when chkdsk ends.
      4. The crash condition appears to be an unrelated issue with chipset controller drivers. Propably this issue becomes more pronounced during periods with intensive disk usage and/or low memory conditions. It is not caused by chkdsk, it is a driver/controller issue which has been reported to be fixed by updating drivers to the latest version.

      No, the real issue is that Microsoft appears to be slated for a massive success with Windows 7. At this point some Microsoft detractors will leap upon any issue in an attempt to spoil the party. In this category you find Randal C. Kennedy of InfoWorld who leapt on to this issue with blatant disregard for any facts. Even if the original blogger and mr. Kennedy were so stupid as to believe this issue was a memory leak and that it caused the crash, by their own account it would only manifest itself under very specific circumstances:

      • chkdsk.exe must be invoked with the /R option to perform a surface scan/repair (this is the most radical option).
      • chkdsk.exe must be invoked for a non-system partition (chkdsk must dismount the drive/partition - using /r on the system drive requires chkdsk to run during boot instead).

      So, even if this was a bug, only users with

      • 2 or more drives/partitions,
      • one non-system exhibiting suspicious behavior to warrant a "surface scan".
      • users able to find and launch the tool

      No, this whole bruhaha has a distinct smell of desperation about it. And kdawson is - as usual - all to happy to assist.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by init100 ( 915886 )

      If the whole RAM isn't used, you're just wasting it.

      That's hardly the case. Unused RAM is used as a disk cache, so that frequently read disk blocks reside in RAM instead of on disk. This makes reading them extremely fast. If applications allocate memory willy-nilly just because it's there, there won't be any memory left for the disk cache, and your system might become very slow. And if even more memory is allocated, the system will start paging stuff in and out of memory, slowing stuff down even more.

      Applications should use the amount of memory they need, pr

  • What about this one? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DurendalMac ( 736637 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @11:40AM (#28986611)
    It seems that if you install Windows 7 on the second hard drive, it will put it's system reserved boot partition on the first drive. This absolutely boggles my mind. Now I need both hard drives just to boot my system? I discovered this when Windows 7 fucked up my Chameleon installation. Then my Hackintosh wouldn't boot into OS X until I reinstalled Chameleon from the iAtkos disc. Then I had to unplug the OS X drive and reinstall Windows 7 so it would stick to it's own goddamned drive and leave the others alone.

    Bad, BAD fucking move, Microsoft. Now Windows 7 can easily fuck up unrecognized partitions on other drives during installation. I really hope that gets fixed in the final version.

    • Re:What about this one? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07, 2009 @11:43AM (#28986675)

      Except during the install it says: "the system reserved partition will be installed on the first boot device."

      I remember wondering why it was 100MB myself when I saw that.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by The MAZZTer ( 911996 )

      I think if you use an existing partition instead of making a new one Windows will just put everything on one partition.

      Anyways you could always copy the files and boot sector from the small partition to the Windows 7 one and raze the small one, then you just need to edit the BCD registry using EasyBCD or bootedit.exe to point to the correct partition on boot. But yeah those are both WINDOWS tools... but bootedit.exe should be available from Windows 7 Setup on the DVD if you mess up and can't boot into Wind

      • Re:What about this one? (Score:5, Funny)

        by dna_(c)(tm)(r) ( 618003 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @01:50PM (#28988221)

        Anyways you could always copy the files and boot sector from the small partition to the Windows 7 one and raze the small one, then you just need to edit the BCD registry using EasyBCD or bootedit.exe to point to the correct partition on boot. But yeah those are both WINDOWS tools... but bootedit.exe should be available from Windows 7 Setup on the DVD if you mess up and can't boot into Windows (press SHIFT+F10), and fixboot.exe can install the boot sector onto any partition.

        And then they say Linux is difficult?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      When you install windows, Microsoft owns your machine. You should know this by now.

      It's like selling your soul to the devil and then be surprised when he actually claims it.

    • Re:What about this one? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Hurricane78 ( 562437 ) <deleted&slashdot,org> on Friday August 07, 2009 @12:15PM (#28987067)

      How is that new? It is that way since Windows XP, and likely even the whole NT and old Windows line before that!

      I know because I have this setup with Gentoo and XP on this computer, and I think I can remember it from Windows 98 too.

    • it's a feature... all your drives belong to us...........

    • Re:What about this one? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Judinous ( 1093945 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @12:23PM (#28987137)
      Windows has never played nice with other operating systems one the same machine. The first rule of multiple-booting has always been "install Windows first".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )
        So, what does one do when one has to reinstall Windows? That happens often enough that it becomes a PITA to have to keep unplugging and shuffling drives around to keep their installer from finding and f*cking up every other partition.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by alc6379 ( 832389 )

          So, what does one do when one has to reinstall Windows? That happens often enough that it becomes a PITA to have to keep unplugging and shuffling drives around to keep their installer from finding and f*cking up every other partition.

          Generally, Windows wants to boot from the FIRST partition of the FIRST drive. There are tricks you can use to get around this-- GRUB has methods of remapping devices and partitions so Windows "thinks" it's on the right drive. But, generally, you install Windows first, to first partition of our first drive, and then install the other OSes afterward. If you have to install Windows again, generally other OS install discs come with some kind of "rescue mode" where you can re-install your bootloader. For insta

          • Generally, Windows wants to boot from the FIRST partition of the FIRST drive.

            Even though I'm a programmer, I don't consider myself particularly apt with regard to installing or setting up an OS (thankfully, XP is drop-dead easy to install and configure in general), but my previous XP machine was running for several years while booting off my H drive. I had a habit for a while of taking whatever drives I had in my previous machine and just throwing them into my new one, so C, D, and E were various hard drives from previous machines (some with Windows directories still on them). F a

        • So, what does one do when one has to reinstall Windows? That happens often enough

          And you don't see anything wrong with that? Seriously. Why should you have to install the same version of he same OS more than once on a machine? Since I've been using Linux, I've only had to reinstall it twice. Once because just after an upgrade I did something foolish and trashed my Linux partition and once because an upgrade didn't work out well. (The newer version couldn't find my NIC no matter what I did so I ended

        • "So, what does one do when one has to reinstall Windows?" Reinstall GRUB noob.

      • Re:What about this one? (Score:4, Informative)

        by shutdown -p now ( 807394 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @12:50PM (#28987501) Journal

        Windows has never played nice with other operating systems one the same machine. The first rule of multiple-booting has always been "install Windows first".

        Well, at least it no longer overwrites GRUB when installing (or at least Win7 RC didn't do that) - while XP always did.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Zancarius ( 414244 )

          Well, at least it no longer overwrites GRUB when installing (or at least Win7 RC didn't do that) - while XP always did.

          Funny, I just wrote up something about this in my last post. You must've been reading my mind! (Although, I didn't exactly experience it with Windows 7.)

          Generally, I install other OSes to their own drives. In the XP days, it'd attempt to overwrite grub (or other bootloaders) on drive(s) you weren't installing XP to. Talk about ridiculous! Though, that may have been an artifact of the other

        • Re:What about this one? (Score:5, Funny)

          by thetoadwarrior ( 1268702 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @02:17PM (#28988595) Homepage

          Well, at least it no longer overwrites GRUB when installing (or at least Win7 RC didn't do that) - while XP always did.

          That's a bug and will be fixed in Win 7's first service pack.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tjstork ( 137384 )

        Windows has never played nice with other operating systems one the same machine

        But at least Windows doesn't change the BIOS time.... Linux dutifully does that, every time...

      • No. Not windows 7. If you partition your hard drive, and install windows, it will take all partitions as it's own. If the other partitions are already occupied (and it can tell that there's something there, even if it can read Reiser, Ext3, etc.), it will not overwrite. You'll need to repair grub afterward, but it's a lot less painful than discovering the partition is wrong and you need to redo everything, trust me.
    • yup, and yup to the genoo/xp dual boot too, microsoft goes to great lengths to not play nicely with other operating systems, i was hoping microsoft would change that attitude but hope is a cousin to dreams and we know both of those are not real...

      looks like i wont be buying an OEM with windows7 on it later this year, the more unfriendly microsoft is to other OSs the more newegg gets my business (building my next desktop)

    • Re:What about this one? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by xtravagan ( 1449719 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @12:30PM (#28987251) Homepage

      You have obviously not installed many OS yourself, and if you really believe what you are writing you should probably stop installing those you already are installing. You can control exactly where and how you want any partitions to be, so even with windows 7. It has a certain default, which is to install a 100MB, let's call it, rescue partition.

      Just pre partition the disk the way you want it and you won't have that extra partition. So perhaps the bad move is on your for not knowing what you are doing and still posting as if you did.

      • Re:What about this one? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by DurendalMac ( 736637 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @01:11PM (#28987731)
        My point is that the user shouldn't have to bloody worry about it. Why should I have to prepartition my drive just to keep Windows from messing with other drives? It should stick to the installation drive by default, not require extra steps to keep it from messing with other drives in the system. Plopping the 100MB system reserved partition on another drive by default means I need BOTH drives to boot, which is stupid. But yes, my bad for assuming Microsoft would do things in a logical fashion.

        • But yes, my bad for assuming Microsoft would do things in a logical fashion.

          s/do things in a logical fashion/acknowledge that any other operating system even exist/

        • Plopping the 100MB system reserved partition on another drive by default means I need BOTH drives to boot, which is stupid. But yes, my bad for assuming Microsoft would do things in a logical fashion.

          To be fair to MS, if a user knows enough to know they have two hard disks and enough to know how to install a second hard disk, they should know how to pop the case open and unplug the one they don't want anything to happen to. Frankly, it'd be a good habit to have, even if you were installing software anointed

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by jim_v2000 ( 818799 )
          95% of users don't install Windows, much less a second OS. The other 5% should know enough to pull it off successfully.

      • Re:What about this one? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by just_another_sean ( 919159 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @01:42PM (#28988117) Journal

        You're missing the point. Even if you pre-partition the second drive Windows still installs it's boot loader on the first. This is not just true of 7, it's been doing this since NT 4.

        Brushing aside your "you should just know how to it" bs ( I thought stuff "just works" in Windows, it's teh easy!) it goes beyond understanding the partitioning. It's about behaving in a counter intuitive way that requires discovery on the user's part. I can
        naturally assume that I'll be better off partitioning my own drive. It takes a real WTF moment to realize you have to rip out one of your drives before you install Windows if you don't want the unexpected behavior of your master boot record being on a different drive then the OS. Another poster said "install Windows first, that's the rule". Fine, I get that but it's still f'ng stupid.

    • What? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tjstork ( 137384 )

      This sounds like more of an invented problem than a real one.

      I have three hard drives in my machine, one IDE and two SATA. I change the order of the drives from my BIOS and put Windows 7 on one of the drives.

      When I want to boot to a different drives, I flip the drive order in the BIOS and that way no OS sees any other. I have Linux on one drive, Windows Vista on another and Windows 7 on the third, and each has its own little world.

      Why even worry about boot loaders and the like, when its so easy to pick a

      • When I want to boot to a different drives, I flip the drive order in the BIOS and that way no OS sees any other. I have Linux on one drive, Windows Vista on another and Windows 7 on the third, and each has its own little world.

        Same here, except I use grub to boot between the different drives (yes, it's possible). If you were a little more keen on bootloaders, I'd suggest you should give it a try as it'll save having to screw with BIOS--if your BIOS isn't terribly old. I used to do the BIOS flip ages ago. It

    • Re:What about this one? (Score:4, Funny)

      by lawnboy5-O ( 772026 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @01:00PM (#28987627)
      Its NOT a Bug.... its a FEATURE! It's from M$ correct? That's the way its supposed to be...

    • Windows assumes that if you don't manually create partitions and instead tell it to do it automatically, it can put things where ever it wants. You basically told Windows "hey, just drop your stuff anywhere, thanks." on the other hand, if you had manually created a partition and then told Windows to use it, it would have.

      The behavior might be slihtly sketchy, but it's not some horrible conspiracy.

    • This is always the case.

      It's due to a limitation in how the BIOS in your machine works. Virtually none can boot off any drive other than the 1st IDE device. So if you want to boot off a 2nd drive, you really boot the first sector and loader (sectors 1-62, LILO/GRUB style) off the 1st IDE device then continue off the other drive.

      To do it any other way wouldn't work with any machine out there except perhaps EFI machines.

  • 7 Bashing (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This is the official Windows 7 bashing thread.
    Please bash here...

    • Re:7 Bashing (Score:5, Funny)

      by godrik ( 1287354 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @12:04PM (#28986907)

      # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/windowspartition

      my pleasure.

      • # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/windowspartition

        my pleasure.

        He said bash, not clobber!

    • C:\> posix.exe /u /c /bin/csh -l
      Welcome to the Interix UNIX utilities.

      DISPLAY=localhost:0.0
      % bash
      bash: Command not found
      % pkg_add bash-3.0.0.9.2-bin
      [...]
      % bash
      bash-3.0$

      Done!

  • Nonissue (Score:5, Informative)

    by Seth Kriticos ( 1227934 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @12:05PM (#28986925)

    If it is really such a serious bug, than it will be fixed with the first installation and following windows update. (or OEM patches).

    No sane person runs a vanilla installation of windows.

    Actually, in the first months when win 7 gets released, a lot of even more serious bugs will surface (because of the wide exposure). They also will be fixed and integrated in the update service. It's known that the first months of release is always the release test and fix cycle.

    This is just how things go.

    Disclaimer: I don't like windows, this is just an objective view.

    • There's no doubt in my mind more bugs will surface with the much wider install, but if this site [hitslink.com] is correct Windows 7 is already close to 1% of the OS market, a respectable install base for an unreleased OS.

      • Ignoring your number for a moment and asserting they are right,

        the current user base are technically inclined folks (you have to make some effort to get it before official release) who manage to avoid specific bugs that will show up when millions of monkeys start to bash the system (OEM's install and sell it to regular Joe/Jane).

        You really want to imply that those two testing environments have anything to do with each other?

        • Obviously they are not perfectly analogous. But current (more technical) users are also more likely to correctly report bugs. In addition, not all of the current users are techies. Speaking only for myself, I have migrated a number of friends/family to Windows 7 RC because there were running Vista. *shudder*
          • While I'm on the subject of W7 bugs, I've said this before and I'll say it again: be wary of Homegroup. It's great when it works and it usually works, but it can destroy all it touches if it gets upset.

            /twocents

    • No sane person runs a vanilla installation of windows.

      Errrrr, yes they do. Organisations the world over do not install lots of individual Windows updates unless one or two are absolutely necessary. They always (if they're sane) create a build from the known vanilla install and then service pack increments as they become available so they always know exactly what is installed on all their systems at any given time.

      However, since it will be many, many years before most organisations upgrade again then it'

  • From TFA:

    The issue [...] involves a fairly arcane process used to check for problems in a particular disk.

    So chkdsk is an 'arcane' process now? I've gotten used to the mainstream press always trying to dumb down anything even remotely technical, but shouldn't cnet be a little bit better? Guess not.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Itninja ( 937614 )
      They meant arcane as in 'mystic'. Because chkdsk is a mystical process *POOF*!

    • From TFA:

      The issue [...] involves a fairly arcane process used to check for problems in a particular disk.

      So chkdsk is an 'arcane' process now? I've gotten used to the mainstream press always trying to dumb down anything even remotely technical, but shouldn't cnet be a little bit better? Guess not.

      Well it is specific to running chkdsk /r on a secondary hard drive, but you're right.

      The two real reasons it's not a problem are Windows Update and the fact that this is caused by a buggy Intel chipset driver that's already been fixed.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by DrgnDancer ( 137700 )

      "chkdsk" isn't an arcane process. "chkdsk -r" on this particular chipset employs an arcane process to do an in depth check for physical problems on the drive. In other words, this bug: only affects people running "chkdsk -r" on a secondary hard drive, with a particular chipset, who have not update their chipset driver, and is caused by an arcane process within the un-updated driver. I'm hardly a Microsoft apologist, but this seems like a Hell of a tempest in a teapot to me.

      (As a side note, anybody know h

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by SilverEyes ( 822768 )
        Not sure how it works with options -r -R, I believe this is dependent on the program. However, capitalization is irrelevant in Windows as Windows is case insensitive.

  • Payback is a... (Score:5, Funny)

    by gklinger ( 571901 ) on Friday August 07, 2009 @12:13PM (#28987047)
    Dear Microsoft,

    It sucks when people spread FUD, doesn't it?

  • Proper facts please (Score:2, Informative)

    by xtravagan ( 1449719 )

    I just don't understand why you can't post correct factual posts, is that so hard??

    On my machine, with 12GB of memory it uses up 10GB, I still have over 1GB of free memory (10%), the computer is not sluggish and working fine.

    If you get an BSOD from this, you should know that it most likely comes from a driver that has not been verfied under low memory scenarios, which is a prerequisit for being WHQL certfied. It is also part of the Driver Verfier supplied by MS.

    To me this seems like a good design, if you ha

  • someone should have caught this LONG ago. Duh.

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