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ITunes 8 a Real Killer App; Taking Down Vista
CWmike writes "Apple 's latest version of iTunes crashes Windows Vista when an iPod or iPhone is connected to the PC, scores of users have reported on Apple's support forum. Plug in and Vista crashes and shows the 'blue screen of death.' The errors began showing up immediately after updating iTunes to Version 8.0, which Apple released Tuesday as part of its iPod refresh. 'I just installed iTunes 8 over my iTunes 7 on Vista [and] now whenever I plug in my iPod, I get a blue screen death. Three times so far. Even if it is plugged in on boot, I get a blue screen," said a user identified as 'sambeckett' on the support forum about 90 minutes after Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrapped up the iPod launch."
This happened to me... I read the Apple thread, and followed simple instructions... unplugged my HP printer, and it stopped the BSOD's when I plugged in my iPhone. Most people are saying the problem is with the Apple USB drivers screwing with the drivers for HP printers and Logitech mice/keyboards. There may be other devices that cause the problem as well, but those two are the biggies.
So until iTunes 8.1 is released, I can either charge my phone or print... but not both at the same time!
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
Except the application installs drivers.
And it's not necessarily a bug in the OS if drivers are causing it, unless you run all drivers in the userland like QNX does.
iTunes installs its own CD drivers to manage ripping and burning, as well as always-on "helper" and updater processes, in addition to drivers for the iPod/iPhone.
Asinine, but then again Apple doesn't follow Windows UI guidelines either.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
It is Apple's fault. If you read the forum you'll note that they already tracked down the offending driver in the minidump. It is Apple's USB driver for the iPod: usbaapl64.sys.
That's a nice philosophy, but anybody who's actually written a kernel-level driver will tell you that's impossible. Kernel-mode drivers require direct access to your computer's memory and bus, and anything with that level of access can cuse your kernel to panic, period.
You can make non-kernel-mode drivers that are much safer, of course, but at the expense of performance and capability.
Mod this bullshit down. The iTunes DRM is 100% inside quicktime.qts.
(I'm the original author of PyTunes, the base for Pymusique -- I know a bit about Fairplay)
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
Itunes in past has:
- deleted your legit music
- Unstalled othe mac applications without asking you
- Hijacked volume control from windows
- Modified code specifically to make it hard to work with the ipod outside of itunes
- Is the largest pusher of DRM technology
Really a BSOD isn't that big of a deal. And incase you are curious NO it isn't windows fault. Why is a music player installing drivers overtop of standard drivers that work perfectly? Aside from their hatred of doing things the same even when they are better only jobs knows. If windows tried to pull even half the bullship Apple has they would have been sued into dust. I find it disgusting its ok since its mac.
You can make non-kernel-mode drivers that are much safer, of course, but at the expense of performance and capability.
That depends entirely on what the device is doing - USB drivers live in userspace (only the generic read/write support for USB devices live in kernel space) and it works fine and support everything AFAIK, but running a modern GPU from userspace I wouldn't try. The iPod is definately in the former category.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
HP Printer.
Drivers on windows can be troublesome. It would suprise me if usbaapl64.sys has some issue previously undiscovered.
This is fallout of shared component design MS uses.
Should Apple have tested with HP printers? Probably, but no one can test every configuration of a PC.
The USB set up MS is using is causing a fault in Ring 0. That's the only way I can see this causing a BSoD
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Vista will not magically run kernel-mode USB device drivers in userspace.
There *is* support for user-mode USB drivers via UMDF (User-mode driver framework). But, the driver has to be implemented differently for that to work.
Apple USB driver (Usbaapl.sys) is a traditional kernel-mode driver.
Any unhandled exception (or, perhaps, kernel memory corruption) in the driver will cause a blue screen.
And there is, in fact, a redistributable version of UMDF for Windows XP (SP2 and later).
throw new SuccessException("Sig read successfully");
There's a great lightweight player called Play that may float your boat:
http://sbooth.org/Play/
Basically, it has the core functionality of iTunes, it's free as in beer, and isn't bloated.
G-Force music visualization