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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.'"
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.
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.
This is the official Windows 7 bashing thread.
Please bash here...
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.
It sucks when people spread FUD, doesn't it?
"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 how capitalization works when a sentence begins with a reference to a command? Changing the first letter to a capital actually changes the name of the command, at least in Unix, so it seems like the wrong thing to do.)
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
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.
Interesting.
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. I'm currently completed the chkdsk scan with no BSODÃ(TM)s or computer sluggishness. Feel free to do this and try it for yourselves. Again, there is no Bug.
Thanks all.
http://www.bluescreenofdeath.org/?p=94#comment-134 Yay kdawson fud articles!
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 have surface scanning the HD (like once in a life time) it is very likely that you don't want to do much else with the computer any way.
I will run this on a low end hardware too, as it is a good way to test that your drivers are in order, but it is very likely not at all connected to chkdsk.
Maybe those that experience BSOD, experience them when they play games too? I guess that's the OS fault too.
I guess yesterday when I ran "gmake -j" on a single core SuSe Linux machine, and it entirely stopped responding, I lost med SSH connections and could barely navigate it through the console is a much better option =)
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 drive to boot from in the BIOS, and disks are so relatively cheap.
This is my sig.
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:
So, even if this was a bug, only users with
No, this whole bruhaha has a distinct smell of desperation about it. And kdawson is - as usual - all to happy to assist.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*