Indeed windows 3.1 provide cooperative multi-tasking instead of our modern preemptive multitasking. Cooperative : it is up to the current thread/process to giv

Indeed windows 3.1 provide cooperative multi-tasking instead of our modern preemptive multitasking. Cooperative : it is up to the current thread/process to give up its CPU usage, meaning that if a thread is stalled the whole system is considered crashed (except for interrupt, which allowed for windows to recover via magic keys ). Preemptive : The system govern the use of the CPU and arbitrary take CPU usage from the thread/process. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_multitasking#Cooperative_multitasking.2Ftime-sharing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_multitasking#Cooper... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preemption_%28computing%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preemption_%28computing%29