5 ms·
How Microsoft Research banished the BSOD
- hga 16y agoWow. From proving the Four Colour Theorem to reducing driver induced BSODs.
- petercooper 16y agoNot as quick and easy as the way they banished the Xbox 360's RROD (Red Ring of Death): http://www.joystiq.com/2010/06/16/xbox-360-slim-17-smaller-than-original-incapable-of-rrod-ing/ http://www.joystiq.com/2010/06/16/xbox-360-slim-17-smaller-t...
- megaman821 16y agoI don't care how uncool Microsoft is perceived to be, Microsoft Research would be my dream job over any other tech company. It's like being a researcher at a top university without having to beg for grants every year.
- ams6110 16y agoI don't know. I have worked with and around academics a few times. They can be surprisingly disorganized and crisis-driven/reactive. "Gets things done" is not exactly how I would describe the academics I've encountered.
- thebigshane 16y agoI am curious why he is being down-voted. I am sure people disagree with him, but I'd like to at least hear some anecdotes.
- mwerty 16y agoSo would I. Some anecdotes about his interactions with MSR researchers would have been nice instead of seemingly random dissing of academics.
- hga 16y agoHere's one MSR employee who impresses me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Peyton_Jones http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Peyton_Jones
- alecco 16y agoNon sequitur. 1- Guy proves 4 Colour Theorem with software, and mathematically proves the software with another program (or something like that, it isn't completely clear.) 2- Most BSODs caused by 3rd party drivers. 3- Make software to test those drivers before shipping. 4- BSODs mostly gone! The article's title promised an explanation but instead they gave a flawed story. It seems on one hand they dumbed down the article, but on the other hand they kept some of the fancy sounding concepts. It would be forgivable if it weren't a tech-oriented publication. "Deep into technology."
- InclinedPlane 16y agoYeah... It's a shame that tech and science journalism is typically so shoddy. It isn't because of merely better testing that Windows 7 / Vista are much more stable than previous versions of Windows, there are fundamental architectural changes. On modern versions of Windows if even your video driver crashes it will be restarted and instead of a BSOD you'll just get a system tray notification.
- ComputerGuru 16y agoUsually. But have the driver crash several times in the space of 3-5 minutes and you'll get a BSOD.
- ComputerGuru 16y agoI assume that the same technique that he used to prove the 4 color theorem can be directly applied to testing drivers (some sort of approach to addressing the halting problem???) and therefore makes it easier to spot leaks and bugs?
- neilc 16y agoWell, no, they do say a little more than that: "... the techniques that George used to prove that his computer based proof was correct happens to have direct application to a set of tools that we give to people that build PC peripherals..." I know MS uses Prefast (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms933794.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms933794.aspx) to improve driver quality. I'm not sure what other verification/analysis techniques they use, but it's not too surprising that a technique developed for efficient automated theorem proving would be applicable to efficient software verification. To say that doing this is solely responsible for "banishing the BSOD" is irresponsible and misinformed in a few different ways, of course.
- flubba 16y agoVery interesting work with the Four Color Theorum, but the BSOD isn't exactly "banished", at least for me.
- ams6110 16y agoIndeed. I had a BSOD just the other day (in Vista).
- mistermann 16y agoI haven't encountered a BSOD anywhere in all the machines I work on in at least 5 years. But I did skip Vista entirely. 64 bit Windows 7 seems mostly excellent stability wise, although I could list a few exceptions to this (Super (video converter) seemed to bring down my internet connection yesterday until I killed it), and I could make a huge list of usability gripes with it that I can't for the life of me figure out why MS doesn't fix. But generally speaking I'm pretty happy.
- magice 16y agoHaha, so Microsoft decides against banishing the BSOD? So far as I know, it seems that most stuffs started at Microsoft Research end there. Therefore: good job, researcher, now I will come back to my trusted fedora. I mean, Fedora.