Windows Fails 8% of the Time

descubes writes "A Journal du Net article reports that about 8% of Windows sessions require a machine reboot. The relevant quote (translated from french) is: "The average rate of failures requiring a system reboot has been measured at around 8% per session. This number varies widely depending on the version of Windows. Windows 2000 has a failure rate of 4%, and NT4 is at 3%, whereas Windows XP is close to 12%." The study was originally made by Acadys and Microcost and gathered data from 1.2M machines belonging to about one thousand companies over a period of one month in seven different countries."

Comments

Biased

[-kertrats-]

And what is the reboot rate of various Linux distros? Unless they're willing to do a comparison under the same protocols, I very much hope that no one here points to this as more proof of needing to switch to Linux, even though I know it will come up.

Not all cleanly installed updated boxen though eh?

[DaLiNKz]

One does need to wonder under what conditions those computers were in. My Windows XP boxes hardly ever crash, and if so usually its a hardware failure (Video card overheats, processor overheats [welcome to Florida!]). All the computers we have at the college run Windows XP, specially tweaked to keep students doing school work [not dorm boxes] and will clean themselves up when they are rebooted.. these boxes too usually never fail unless its hardware, and operate all day with many different users per day. I also wonder, since my views are somewhat cleaned by our nice IT folks at the college, what these computers they monitored were like. Was there ad-ware on a few? A few viruses maybe? It happens, and IT can't always be there to fix those problems.

My point simply is usually its not Windows XP faulting for me, its something else not getting along with it. Be it [insert]ware, or hardware issues. Good example is I hardly ever reboot this computer, it has easily gained weeks of uptime, usually only shutting down due to thunderstorms taking out the electrical lines.

Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions?

[aurelian]

Personally I use 2k at work and XP at home (for my Windows machines) and I can't remember a crash for either.

This is about rebooting. A crash is not the only time Windows forces you to reboot. You say you shut down daily - only Windows users would regard that as normal.

What do we know?

[Lucas Membrane]

What's a 'session'? They give me XP at work. Not my idea of a good time. I reboot XP when I don't understand what's going on, but usually I don't know if XP has failed. It seems to have some problem with degradation of the management of some resource (maybe memory) over very long sessions (a week or more). Then, when the machine gets sluggish and recalcitrant, I reboot. But maybe it's just the network admin spying on my machine or something that I don't even see. Damfino.

Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions?

[galaxy300]

Let me be the first to say "180 days? Wow!!!".

Just kidding. Although I do love the story about the Novell server at some University (in Florida, I believe) which had been running for several years with no reboots and no problems. One day some brilliant tech decided to look for the server and realized that it wasn't there. Nowhere to be found.

Fast forward a couple more years, they were doing construction, and found the server had somehow been put in a closet that had been bricked over - meaning that the server had been running without intervention for close to 5 years without a reboot or software updated. Go Novell! Running on Compaq hardware, IIRC.

The Windows users are eating plenty of poultry

[ShatteredDream]

in my CS department. The amount of crow that is getting passed around is amazing these days as many are being forced to switch to Linux or MacOS X for class in the 400 levels and they realize "uhhh those UNIX guys were right about Windows." The irony of it is that we Mac users are usually very good at helping them get started with OSX.

Still, we can't blame Microsoft for a lot of the instability since there are so many users out there using terrible and/or outdated drivers. Microsoft cannot be blamed for the quality of the drivers that most Windows users have because they didn't write them.

Of course I will say this about Windows. It is nice for the first few months, but then it just begins to become as sensually appealing as a rotten piece of bait fish left on your back porch for a few days in the sun. My Macs frequently have several times the uptimes of the Windows PCs I hear about and the Windows users are shocked, "why are 8 weeks of uptime, your PowerBook is still fast and usable."

Re:The Windows users are eating plenty of poultry

[krray]

It's the Windows die-hards that I find amusing to watch in the various offices -- with few exceptions (AutoCAD) when their system dies it will be replaced with either a Linux based or a Mac. *Every* Mac convert has come up to me, about a year later, and expressed how happy they are with it once they "got it" ... and that they've purchased a Mac for their home use too.

The statement of not blaming Microsoft for the instability brought about by bad/outdated drivers is horse puckey and a REALLY bad excuse. If the software is failing then IT, and it alone, should fail and be disconnected/ignored by the OS. With Microsoft a bad font can (and will) bring down the ENTIRE house of cards. So yes, I very much place blame squarely on Microsoft's shoulders and due to their inabilities Win2K was the _last_ release that I'm forced to still support.

In the trial days (releasing "other" OS' out to the remote user base) it became very obvious very quickly what was going to happen to the help desk (nearly gone :). Remote Windows users were almost always having some issue, lockup, hang, or crash of some sort. The Mac users ... almost never call.

Bottom line: we're now spending less on licensing, less in support costs, and less in user counter-productivity...which does mean we've had more $$$ to hire a few more people (yeah, that much in savings) to work on what we do in our business.

With Windows you'll find yourself constantly fighting or babying the computer -- with the Un*x's the computer just works for you.

Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions?

[stratjakt]

The XP box on my desk at work has never crashed by any fault other than my own (testing funky code), but the higher end "gaming" box at home has crashed a number of times. Usually while playing a game.

Personally I blame the craptastic drivers from both nVidia and ATi. They're hell-bent on getting the most flips per flooble and the stability of the drivers suck.

ATi adds a lame new interface (which crashes) called "Catalyst Control Center" while the actual usability of the drivers is swirling down the toilet. All new releases focus on little tweaks in their $500 dollar range cards to make it benchmark fastest in Doom 3, while support for the cards people actually own dwindles.

For instance, if I try to play Doom 3 with anything higher than "Medium" settings, my machine will hardlock. Radeon 9800, no tweaking or overclocking, just the latest "stable" drivers.

This isn't an anti-ATi rant, I had the same bullshit with nVidia.

Barring a hardware faulure, it's virtually always the video drivers fault, since it actually has the power to bring down the system.

I'd say the higher instance of XP bombs reflects it's status as the current PC gaming platform.

I blame nVidia, ATi, and Microsoft for "certifying" their instable, shit drivers. Driver certification really just means your check cleared.

What can they do about it, though? I'd gladly sacrifice a few FPS for a stable machine. But when a driver release gets less "3DMarks" than the one before it, the little kids throw a fit on rage3d and other sites.

Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions?

[UranusReallyHertz]

Even more so with the new fluid dynamic bearings in newer hard drives. The only time they actually wear is when they are started and stopped, otherwise there is no actual contact between the bearing surfaces and so they can theroetically last forever. I read about a 100 year old hydroelectric turbine that used the water as a fluid bearing that had no significant wear and was predicted to last at least another 1000 years.

What is worse, is the 20 minute rule

[tod_miller]

Infected in 20 minutes

Out of the box home windows xp has on average 20 minutes (if on a uni network, much less) before it is taken over.

corporate networks should all now be firewalled... shouldn't they?

Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions?

[geordie_loz]

I'd be interested to know just what you were doing when it crashed. My system tends to be stable unless I'm farting around with low-level stuff or drivers..

My XP box is pretty stable, but I have had it blue-screen (although it is a nice shade of blue in XP), a few times, doing fairly normal things..

I update regularly, and would say that XP seems more stable that any version of windows I've used. But I don't really use it that often, only the odd time when I must use windows and wine does not suffice.

Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions?

[LoneGunner]

Even in corporations where there is an IT staff, I see computers brought in all the time full of spy-ware and viruses so, you can't say that since there is an IT staff there won't be any problems. In our own environment we used 2k for a few years, and now use XP. I never reboot my computer unless absolutely needed, it runs 24/7. I do development with VS, flash, Photoshop, and several other environments. With 2k I would have to reboot at least once a week to keep things stable sometimes more than once in a day. With XP I only reboot once every 2 weeks to once a month. In my personal experience XP is a much more stable environment.

Re:No way...(consider this)

[gosand]

I find it hard to believe Windows XP crashes 12% of the time. I run XP at work and at home. Here at work I am building, compiling, crashing code, running about 20 things at once and I almost never need to reboot. I shut down on weekends, and sometimes at night to save the company some dough, but I rarely need to reboot.

Crashing and requiring a reboot are two different things. I use XP at work too. I have ZERO spyware on it. It is for work, I use it for work only. No button bars, no cute apps. The only thing I use personally on it are Opera, PuTTY, and an old version of Winamp. I have to reboot about twice a week.

If people need to reboot 12% of the time, then they are doing something wrong. It's not the OS, but more the user in my opinion. XP is a stable system, and does a good job of keeping my machines running.

I have a good idea why my system needs to be rebooted, it is some of the apps I run - mainly certain Rational tools. Sure, on Win98 it would blue screen and crash. XP will just slow to a near halt or start behaving very oddly. Reboots are part of Microsoft OS maintenance. If there is a problem with your machine - reboot. SOP, everywhere I have been.

Even if XP is stable, if it allows applications to bring it down and make it unusable, then the PC isn't stable - period. If the OS can't control it, then it is the fault of the OS.

Hey, I have problems at home on my Linux machine too. Apps will cause X to freak out, and I have had to reboot because I don't know how to cleanly shutdown X remotely or from a console. I am sure there is a way, it just happens so infrequently I haven't bothered to find out. Sometimes Opera will crash X, or if I am messing around with settings on Mplayer, it will freeze it. I used to have problems with my Xfs (font server) crashing all the time, but that was on my old system (Redhat 7.3). I think that may have caused some of the problems with Opera freaking out. I just upgraded to Mandrake 10.0 a few weeks ago, so hopefully that is all straightened out. But my uptime at home is usually VERY long. Not to start comparing, but it usually gets rebooted only when the power goes out or something. In fact, my web server has been up since the last power hit, 118 days ago. Before that, it was up over 230. :-)

Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions?

[Stargoat]

I've been working with XP, 2000, and Windows 98 in a business environment. In an enterprise business environment, where IT controls the PCs, and people who install Yahoo Search Bar and other webtastic crap are fired, the O/S run great. A single, well built build with a good and constantly updating AV program will not fail 8% of the time. That's a load of horse dung.

But in an enviroment filled with Google Bar, Webshots, Gator, Weatherbug and other crap, not including the pure spywear and viruses, the PCs will fail. It has nothing to do with the OS, but everything to do with stupid users, and a lazy and ineffective IT department.

Re:My take...

[Coryoth]

I always log out of KDE at the end of the session (*), but my machine (home-office workstation) normally stays up until it has to be hardware-serviced or I want to upgrade the kernel. I maxed this in about 100 days. X never locked me up badly, at least not since Xfree 3.1 or (ie, a long time ago).

I'll have to agree there actually. Most recently even when a program has managed to lock X up, it still respects Ctrl-Alt-F1, from which I can kill the offedning program(s) and X bounces back happily. I guess this is the equivalent of Ctrl-Alt-Delete and using the Task Manager in Windows. The Linux method (while less user friendly) has the advantage that you drop right out of X, and hence have full control of your machine again. Trying to haul up the task manager when the GUI is locking can be rather difficult sometimes.

Jedidiah.

How Many Of These Were Avoidable?

[theManInTheYellowHat]

Of the reboots that were done how many could be avoided by knowing how to get out of what caused the lockup? I know that the average user just does a reboot to get the problem solved when ending a task might get them out of a jam.

Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions?

[networkBoy]

What's funny is our IT dept. reccomends that we install the google toolbar for it's pop-up blocking. I simply used Firefox instead, but can not access any intranet sites with it. So for the internal stuff I use IE.
As to the crashing, my XP laptop and Win2K home machines need about a reboot a week on average. My linux boxes and my Win2K "server" (client build) which sees little to no console activity, run for weeks and up without reboots, and all the reboots I've neede to do were because of me.
This leads me to believe that the bulk of Windows is fine and that explorer and the other UI programs are the source of most problems (sans spyware).

-nB

Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions?

[smallguy78]

and the type of people impressed by those brags aren't normally the type of people who you want respect from...

I remember a statistic in a Bill Bryson book saying that 2% of the US's yearly electricity use is from workstations left on over night.

Mod parent way up Up UP!

[khasim]

"Windows users obviously have a different expectation of "stable" from Linux users."

I've been saying this for YEARS!

A Windows user will say "uptime" and mean "time since I had a blue screen" but will NOT count the daily / weekly / whatever reboots they perform.

If Windows starts to go sluggish, they reboot. But they do NOT consider that a break in their "uptime" NOR do they consider that a crash.

# uptime
08:34:13 up 115 days, 18:12, 1 user, load average: 0.10, 0.04, 0.01

That's because I had to move it a few months ago. Everything is current except the latest kernel.

Now I just KNOW I'll see posts from Windows users talking about their "uptime" and so on. But too many of the Windows patches require reboots. Here are the scenarios:

#1. Unpatched Windows box with high uptime.

#2. Patched Windows box with low uptime.

#3. User who does not understand uptime.