Slashdot Mirror


Microsoft Denies Windows 7 "Showstopper Bug"

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.'"

10 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. RAM optimization by sopssa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:RAM optimization by GreenEnvy22 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:RAM optimization by Nimey · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Haven't read many kdawson stories?

      --
      Hail Eris, full of mischief...

      E pluribus sanguinem
    3. Re:RAM optimization by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

  2. Re:What about this one? by Joe+U · · Score: 4, Insightful

    don't you think while using a Hackintosh, trying to dual boot a beta OS, and probably some other crap you didn't mention that you might run into a few problems? And yeah, I am sure your dual boot hackintosh is on the top of the list for a fix.

    Hi.

    On the top of your browser, there's an address bar, after the http:/// and before the next / does the word 'slashdot.org' appear?

    I'm assuming yes, so seriously, what did you expect?

  3. Re:What about this one? by Judinous · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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".

  4. Re:What about this one? by xtravagan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  5. Re:What about this one? by DurendalMac · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No dipshit, Hackintoshing has very little to do with it. As far as Windows 7 is concerned, it was simply another drive. That's all. The point of the matter is that it fucked up a partition that it didn't properly recognize. The same thing could happen to Linux installations as well. It's an ugly oversight that is NOT specific to Hackintoshes, so pull your head out of your ass.

  6. Re:What about this one? by DurendalMac · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  7. Re:What about this one? by just_another_sean · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal