windowsXP

[deep]

Regardless of how you think computer OSes and hardware ought to function, it is NOT up to the OS to allow for every sort of hardware interrupt and control that peripheral manufacturers can think up. Hence the need for drivers to run at the kernel level, where protection against errors are virtually nonexistent. In such an environment, the slightest mistake or unhandled exception can be fatal.

Regardless of how you think computer OSes work, you've only had experience with the PC world - a world torn between games, speed, cost and constant change. (never assume too much about what the other guys background is).

Granted a video driver is a pretty serious thing to screw up - but in a properly designed system you have multiple consoles, the main ones controlling the system run in dumb terminal mode. Something the consumer PC's couldn't afford. But that has nothing to do with the academic argument of "ought to function" - just a cost issue.

It's perfectly possible and feasible (AND it has been done) to build a "gracefully terminate" driver into an OS. All you have to do is catch the "exception" created by the fault - provided you have a clean protected design where the driver NEVER usurps or corrupts the basic OS kernel.

Why exactly does a driver have to run at "the kernel level"? I'll tell you - it has NOTHING to do with a good design, but is related to:

1. It's much easier to design/write it that way.
2. For games, it speeds it up quite a bit.

A good way for a stable system, Nope. Indeed a poor security choice.

The IBM VM machine (not the same as Digital) can boot/run multiple copies of OS's at the same time, have "crashes", yet recover from any one of them at any time without bringing down the machine. Even the drives are virtual spanning any number of physical disks. Old old technology:)

Ideally the OS should be protected against driver malfunctions, but that is not very realistic.

It's quite realistic .. see previous. Not only ideal, but that's the way a PROFESSIONAL COMMERCIAL OS should be designed (and has been).

The design of the OS is not at fault here. It is merely following common-sense guidelines.

Please - more hand waving. What exactly is "common-sense"? Whose common sense, yours? Something you read? Something somebody else told you? Pure bunk. It's not common sense at all - it's a bad design compromise as listed above.

However, let's keep focus here. Remember, it is YOU who claimed that the OS wouldn't blue screen or lockup in some catastrophic way. Now you are giving reasons why it's ok to do so. This is contradicting your own original premise here - but that was my point in the first place - I agree it's a poor design rationalized for the reasons given:)

[Doom-Child]

I'm staying out of the technical arena here, since my forte is graphics, but I will say this:

deep, you were the kid in school who corrected the science teacher's spelling, weren't you?

DC

[oRaptoRo]

Deep dude, eat a dick

I play more games than you can imagine and I've had no trouble at all. Mike or whoever the fuck's problem it was probably came from a conflict between his drivers/settings whatever, because I've put xp on about 10 computers now and I've not had a problem with any. All devices ranging from Zip drives to External CDRW's and Geforce3's to Radeon 64's, no problems.

If you want to be a rebel and say fuck microsoft--go right ahead. I don't like them any more than the next, but until a reasonable alternative is introduced that can actually compete with windows in terms of functionality, shut the fuck up. And no, Linux is not an OS that can compete with windows in terms of functionality. Open Source = Nailed Coffin

[deep]

A preemtive kernel with internal protection (which is not something every kernel has to be, and not necessary a good thing). And don't call me 'smartie'. Thank you.

Preemptive has nothing to do with internal protection. I call you "smartie" because of the catch phrases tossed out - as if they somehow explain - they don't.

Preemptive can be done without protection and visa-versa. What you wrote above sounds like some general textbook thing. Technically any OS that processes interrupts is "preemptive". How tasks get processor time is something totally different again, a task scheduling issue, preemptive sort of, more a time slice design (again an old OS design).

You don't have to process interrupts to service requests though. Polling is a favorite in many environments - like UART code and switching (hardware sets a flag saying it has some data ready to send, code reads the "flag" and issues a "read").

Embedded systems can have special rules, since the software they run is fixed - but still not a good idea to give up protection from an academic POV. (Aside from cost, when would a non-protected system be a good idea - assuming the chip supports it?)

COST drives most decisions in various ways - from a simpler chip to a cheaper chipset. Imagine your ABS driver failing! Thank god those system run from read only memory:)

But I'm amazed at the way this is going. My ONE and only point is that XP is flawed in some areas. This being one of them. It blue screens, it defies your will:) And I like it. That's all.

[deep]

Deep dude, eat a dick

Is that what you do? (imagining you eating dick, umm guess that fits). All you've ever done is flame and miss the whole point - over and over. If anything, Arioch explains why this occurs. Are you going to now argue that a driver can't bring the system down? LOL.

I play more games than you can imagine and I've had no trouble at all.

Goodie for you. This is boring. You know how many times I've heard that kind of statement. Hey dude, I speed every day and I've never been caught yet.

Are you now trying to tell me you've run ALL the combo's there are? I'm smiling bud.

Mike or whoever the fuck's problem it was probably came from a conflict between his drivers/settings whatever, because I've put xp on about 10 computers now

Mike has put it on probably 100:) Ditto for NT, Ditto for Win2k and god knows how many of the rest. You see, Mike does this for a living. Next.

Oh, the game is Dark Age of Camelot for those curious.

If you want to be a rebel and say fuck microsoft--go right ahead.

Man, you don't read well. Quite the opposite. I think it's a great system. Never said ANYTHING remotely resembling what you wrote. Get real, get glasses.

Remember, (since everyone seems to be missing the MAIN FUCKING POINT), all I'm saying is that XP can crash and it has crashed. PERIOD. BFD. It's not the end of the world.

[læmænt]

Preemptive can be done without protection and visa-versa.

Wait, either I'm dumb, or something is wrong. How do you do protection without preemptive? I mean, what would be the point of that? Say, a driver enters an infinite loop; what then?

[læmænt]

all I'm saying is that XP can crash and it has crashed. PERIOD. BFD. It's not the end of the world.

No, you're also saying that it's XP's fault, which I (and Arioch) disagree with.

It's funny how I dislike XP but defend it, and you like it and blame it :)

[Cypher]

more bugs and useless bullshit or many bug fixes and usefull addons.

Microsoft's typical history is to fix 2 or 3 things and break 20 more, usually with double the system requirements to get the same performance. I hear XP isn't as bad as going from 95 to 98 to ME, but it's got a load of useless crap and bloated software that will no doubt be a helluva lot slower on pre-Y2K machines.

I haven't been able to test it for myself though, the above is just what I'm getting from other users and reviews. So if I ever do get a copy for myself I'll probably write a huge thing about it.

Hey Lüt, why do IMJack and Arioch have negative posts now? What the hell did they do? I haven't been here since Wednesday so I'd like to know what they did.

[danarchist]

They took a ride on the idiot train with about 5 other people...long story, you have to have been there...

[Cypher]

I want a title under my name please!

[IMJack]

Hey Lüt, why do IMJack and Arioch have negative posts now? What the hell did they do? I haven't been here since Wednesday so I'd like to know what they did.

You missed Linguica's little "Get Yourself A Title" funfest. I was at the site at the appointed time, and yet didn't get on Ling's little list. I commented on it (I didn't notice Ling's "don't post on this thread or face my wrath" message, but who reads the whole post anymore?) and got slapped down to -100 posts. I'm sure arioch has a similar story, and a couple of other people too. And we spent the rest of the weekend arguing, bitching, and moaning about it.

So basically, you didn't miss a damn thing. Lucky you. :)

[Doom-Child]

Well that little aside was a very ugly random neural firing...

DC

[IMJack]

I'm sorry, did that sound/seem rude? I didn't mean for it to. I just wanted to recap the weekend for Cypher. Really.

Ling: I'm sorry. I didn't read the whole post. I admit I was an idiot. May I please have my count set back to zero? Thanks.

[Arioch]

However, let's keep focus here. Remember, it is YOU who claimed that the OS wouldn't blue screen or lockup in some catastrophic way.

No, my post said something to the effect that 2K/XP wouldn't suddenly blow up, wreck the install, and never boot again ... with normal usage. Read context?

Lock-up, fine, BSOD, fine. As soon as you reboot it's back to normal and you can use it, right?

The IBM VM machine (not the same as Digital) can boot/run multiple copies of OS's at the same time, have "crashes", yet recover from any one of them at any time without bringing down the machine.

So they can crash too. Horray.

What again are we arguing about?

[Doom-Child]

I stopped arguing two pages back. I've just been watching the fireworks.

DC

[spank]

Win XP is very good (in fact, any MS OS is - maybe except for DOS 4 - people just don't get the facts right), period. Screw using Linux to be an anti-MS rebel and get real.

[Doom-Child]

I run both XP and Suse Linux 7.2. I enjoy learning new things, OSes included, and besides, I can do things in Linux that I can't do in Windows, and vice versa. I support the open source community, but there's no way they can match a software giant until somebody out there stops to think about the fact that you can't build an OS on functionality alone. Thankfully, Linux is gaining some amount of ground. The newer versions of KDE and XFree86 are really top-notch, and they can only get better.

DC

[deep]

No, my post said something to the effect that 2K/XP wouldn't suddenly blow up, wreck the install, and never boot again ... with normal usage. Read context?

Sorry, but you are filling in few blanks that DO NOT EXIST in this thread.

If you were thinking the above you didn't say it nor did the guy that asked the question. Let's refresh:

The question was: In a case of a Windows crash, What happens ? (relating to the registry/activation - inferring installing new hardware or software and the system doesn't work any longer - which is vague)
Your reply: Assuming you don't go fucking about with the partition sizes, such a catastrophic event is pretty much impossible with Win2k/XP.

My post merely pointed out that the "catastrophic even" = "Windows crash" is indeed not impossible, but has already occurred. If "windows crash" is interpreted by you as inability to boot, OK, let's examine that road too:

Installing a new driver is "normal usage". Installing new hardware is also "normal". I can see that it's possible to get a system that won't boot anymore after installing same (for reasons already mentioned by both of us). So then one reverts to a back level:) And this is precisely the same issue as Win9X (anybody remember the first 3D cards and the driver fits? - drove me nuts).

Let's get off this defensiveness and realize that arguing about private internalization of the posts - not something that was explicitly asked or stated - is needless. Just explain your posts better.

Updating XP and worrying about if it will "activate" is quite a different topic. However, as I recall, if you wait 60 days or something, it resets, so the number of changes allowed would therefore be infinite:) I don't think MS wants a zillion calls just because of upgrades.

So they can crash too. Horray.

What crashes, VM? The VM OS just doesn't crash even if the other OSes it's running do. It's actually a VERY SIMPLE OS. Imagine that.

The closest example I can give you is how XP runs DOOM (the original). Read up on that and it will explain a LOT about future questions that will be posted in this forum.

[deep]

Preemptive can be done without protection and visa-versa.

Wait, either I'm dumb, or something is wrong. How do you do protection without preemptive? I mean, what would be the point of that? Say, a driver enters an infinite loop; what then?

I'll pass on one question (just kidding, couldn't pass it up).

Protection is merely an "access" code to memory. So if you had a polling style OS, you can still have tasks residing in different memory spaces or have data in "protected" memory. This has nothing to do with "preemptive".

Preemptive is a term used to imply the ability to interrupt task X so you can give control to task Y. The CPU hardware drives the interrupt, either some device wants service or just the system timer (which then drivers the task dispatch code = time slicing). Technically an OS can also interrupt itself via an instruction, but that's a different game.

So one can have a protected polling system, an unprotected polling system, an interrupt driven protected system and an interrupt driven unprotected system. And just something that does neither and just grinds out code, and for example, displays something.

If a driver enters an infinite loop neither preemptive nor protection will save it's skinny little ass. An i/o driver typically masks off interrupts (so it won't loose control) so it can do it's thing. So if it got in a loop, it will become dead as a doornail to the outside world:) No normal interrupt will get through - like a KB or mouse task. Some cpu's do have special pins that permit a soft reset overriding ANY locks and/or "deadman" timers that can kick in.

So various combos exist, usually driven by cost. Simple devices don't have any OS at all. They do the whole shebang all by themselves. A common example is a wrist watch.

Just off the top of my head - hope it's not too long:)

[Cypher]

Hey Lüt, why do IMJack and Arioch have negative posts now? What the hell did they do? I haven't been here since Wednesday so I'd like to know what they did.

You missed Linguica's little "Get Yourself A Title" funfest. I was at the site at the appointed time, and yet didn't get on Ling's little list. I commented on it (I didn't notice Ling's "don't post on this thread or face my wrath" message, but who reads the whole post anymore?) and got slapped down to -100 posts. I'm sure arioch has a similar story, and a couple of other people too. And we spent the rest of the weekend arguing, bitching, and moaning about it.

So basically, you didn't miss a damn thing. Lucky you. :)

[b] damn it, i want a title underneath my name! When's the next "Get Yourself A Title" funfest?

[Zaldron]

Post on "it is finished". He might listen to you :P

[nxn]

heh, another one bites the dust.

[oRaptoRo]

STANDARD ORAPTORO "I AM THE OS ENCYCLOPEDIA" BULLSHIT THAT JUST WASTES SERVER SPACE.

[Cypher]

Post on "it is finished". He might listen to you :P

You must think I'm really stupid don't ya? He said he'd ban anyone else who posted there who wasn't on the list. And Cypher is not on the list.

[læmænt]

http://misty.apana.org.au/cement/