Also, certain programs will run fine in a system with poor drivers -- sometimes the drivers simply have trouble with only a tiny portion of memory, or a single command. IDE drivers may interfere with the disk caching and have a bug in handling a certain call. Manufacturer''s IDE drivers are ALWAYS being upgraded for "compatibility" reasons (so the hardware manufacturers say). That means the standard is VERY complex. Different programs also use different Win32 API functions -- perhaps a driver bug will cause one of those functions to fail when used by another thread. After all, Windows just allows device access in a semi-transparent manner -- much like DirectX in concept. The API functions map to certain, more low-level, calls in the drivers.
Windows itself never crashes. That BSOD is when Windows is almost completely dependant upon a device driver (and must be for performance reasons -- it can''t double check EVERYTHING
) and that driver does something Windows was not expecting. In other words, a bug in the driver. If one of Windows'' built-in vxds crashes (IOSYS, VWIN32, and a myriad of others), it''s because one of the drivers that it was dependent on has a bug. Windows never crashes from its own code (excepting a few minor patches from the Win95 days), only the drivers it is dependent on. An example of this would be the display driver crashing. There is now no free video memory, and the drivers (which are Windows only access to the card) won''t allow it to set the display mode to text and put up the BSOD. So the computer simply "locks up" when the input devices are working properly and you could reboot. Suppose the input drivers were to crash, or maybe the power management drivers? See my point? The drivers are only an abstraction layer to the hardware, in much the same way DX is built (conceptually). If a DX program crashes, it''s most likely not DX, but a DX driver or the progam itself that crashed.Even if your drivers are WHQL certified, that doesn''t mean they''re perfect -- just performed well enough in the testing. They may fail other programs. Windows makes no claims as to being perfect. Drivers are very tricky. I couldn''t program one. They may fail given a certain value that''s out of the normal range, or something may not even be handled at all.
IE5 locking up is no small occurance -- other people seem to experience it, too. From what I know with driver upgrades and such, IE5 (and also IE4) happened to be very taxing on certain odd functions of the display adapter. Until I got my display drivers upgraded, the cursor would look terrible whenever I had IE5 open.
It also could be the video memory on your display card. It could be the AGP drivers (on my PC, the top 10 pixels of the screen would have little green lines, and the whole PC would lock up -- until I updated the drivers).
Some cards (video cards, sound cards, etc.) don''t work properly when sharing the same IRQs or regions of memory. Sometimes their drivers don''t work properly (even if the cards do) when sharing certain IRQs.
As for Windows being poorly programmed -- if there was a bug in Windows, it wouldn''t even start up. Windows'' startup procedures are just that complex. Not everything happens in the same order everytime Windows starts.
Windows does NOT include drivers, hardware, or software as part of the OS -- they are only USED by the OS. To bash Windows itself because of bad drivers or bad hardware or bad software is just plain ignorant. I''ve seen people say, "Windows is just too buggy," or, "MS doesn''t know what it''s doing," or blaming something else they don''t know anything about and never tried doing. If you want to learn why drivers crash, and be able to intelligently say that it''s Windows'' fault and not drivers, I''d advise you to learn to program some drivers. Then realize that the drivers you''ve programmed (maybe a simple COM port driver) aren''t anywhere near as complex as most other drivers typically used by Windows. Also, look at drivers that are updated (or were updated in their lifetime) very frequently. Look at the list of bug fixes they provide. Video drivers aren''t just pixel plotting devices.
The constant here is NOT MS code. You can''t say that and know what you''re talking about. As I said before, if there was even a discrete bug somwhere deep in the OS''s core, Windows wouldn''t even start properly. The only reason the OS itself may crash is because it must, to some extent, be completely dependant on its drivers. If the drivers aren''t working properly, you can''t expect the OS to work properly either. Same goes for malfunctioning hardware and poorly programmed software. Perhaps IE5 itself has a few bugs in it -- if that is the only thing that crashes your PC, you can''t really say Windows is to blame. Of course, that was the only conclusion I was able to draw from your posts to date. I simply cannot list all the reasons why drivers may crash the OS -- that''s way too big a topic to discuss here. The reasons I''ve listed here are only a drop in the bucket. "You can''t disprove a negative" - Bjarne Stroustrop (sp?).
If you really want to find out if Windows itself crashes, take an afternoon and remove all cards but the video card, disconnect all USB devices, and make sure your hard drive and CD-ROM drive are connected to the motherboad''s IDE connectors. Boot the computer into Safe Mode and remove any drivers for cards you took out. Remove the IDE drivers and video drivers as well (maybe Matrox provides an uninstall utility?). Reboot Windows into Normal mode, install the Standard VGA driver for your video card. Also install the Standard Dual PCI IDE driver for your hard drive. Go into the DX7 Diagnostic Tool and disable AGP. Reboot again into Normal Mode. If anything crashes now, you''ve got either got a hardware or software problem, but it won''t be the drivers. Note that DX programs typically won''t run with less than 256 colors -- the Standard VGA driver uses only 16 colors. (This is not a complete guide to removing hardware -- please see the device manufacturer''s web site and/or documentation for more detailed steps.)
Oh yeah, if you want to simply test hardware (like the cpu and memory) without messing up the registry, just boot into Safe Mode. If Windows crashes in Safe Mode, while just using Windows Explorer or one of the accessories, it''s definitely hardware. I''ve also had a cpu go bad on me -- crashed occasionally at first, then more and more frequently, then the npu went bad, and finally it crashed or rebooted itself after a few minutes. When I replaced the cpu, everything was fine.
Good Luck!
- null_pointer
