Meaningful error messages
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@Severity One said:
Windows 7 is also less stable
Huh?
@Severity One said:even this morning, it BSOD-ed on cdrom.sys
Or it could be say a damaged HDD, dead RAM that happens to be benign on XP by chance, etc...
Vista/7 are way more stable in part due to better separation between drivers and the system, like crashed graphics drivers being auto restarted.
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@Severity One said:
@blakeyrat said:
Vista also got slammed because it runs WORST in its first few days-- it's asking UAC prompts all over because people are installing stuff, it's indexing your files, it's determining what to put in the predictive cache, etc.
After the first week, it's smooth as silk. But reviewers only run it a few days before writing their review.
Exactly. I was a fairly happy user of XP, which has (I think) never BSOD-ed on me. Then I downloaded a preview or whatever Microsoft like to call it of Vista. Now I've been using operating systems since NewDos/80, but few irked me so much as Vista did. Every single time you do as much as move the mouse, you get another one of those bloody pop-ups.
Windows 7 does this a lot better. Windows 7 is also less stable (and this is on a Supermicro motherboard, not just something you pick up with your order of Sezhuan beef and noodles) than XP is; even this morning, it BSOD-ed on cdrom.sys. Considering that the optical drive hasn't been used in months, it is a little disappointing.
If you got Windows 7 to BSOD, then you have some kind of hardware or driver failure. The ONLY time I've ever gotten a BSOD on a Windows 7 PC was when I had it overclocked to ~5 GHz and the CPU just wasn't stable. I even have several video driver crashes a day (because my graphics card died and I repaired it by baking in the oven) and even that doesn't cause a BSOD.
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@Severity One said:
Windows 7 does this a lot better. Windows 7 is also less stable (and this is on a Supermicro motherboard, not just something you pick up with your order of Sezhuan beef and noodles) than XP is; even this morning, it BSOD-ed on cdrom.sys. Considering that the optical drive hasn't been used in months, it is a little disappointing.
The swans near your house are all black, aren't they?
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@mott555 said:
If you got Windows 7 to BSOD, then you have some kind of hardware or driver failure.
Same for XP. And Vista. And 2K.
Not sure about 98 or Me.
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@dhromed said:
@mott555 said:
If you got Windows 7 to BSOD, then you have some kind of hardware or driver failure.
Same for XP. And Vista. And 2K.Not sure about 98 or Me.
The really shocking and annoying part is that we've all been using NT-based OSes for over a decade now, and people still think BSODs can be caused by software.
BSODs are hardware problems. If you have a BSOD, you have a problem with your hardware. Get a hammer and NAIL THAT INTO YOUR HEAD and stop saying it's due to software because it's wrong and bad advice that leads to the suffering of thousands of people with faulty hardware every day who think "well maybe if I just reinstall the BSOD will go away" but it won't because it's a physical problem with their hardware.
Get it? Got it? Good.
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@blakeyrat said:
thousands of people with faulty hardware every day who think "well maybe if I just reinstall the BSOD will go away" but it won't because it's a physical problem with their hardware.
Oh, I repair-installed XP a long time ago and it fixed a BSOD upon plugging in my USB camera.
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@mott555 said:
If you got Windows 7 to BSOD, then you have some kind of hardware or driver failure. The ONLY time I've ever gotten a BSOD on a Windows 7 PC was when I had it overclocked to ~5 GHz and the CPU just wasn't stable. I even have several video driver crashes a day (because my graphics card died and I repaired it by baking in the oven) and even that doesn't cause a BSOD.
Like I said, I've never gotten XP to BSOD on me (as far as I can remember), and 7 a couple of times. I'm not excluding hardware failure (there is some perplexing issues with either SATA drive or both that sometimes freezes all applications for like two minutes), but I've also had the Dell box at work BSOD on me.
A hardware problem would be unfortunate, because I specifically get branded/towards high-end components to avoid exactly this kind of problem.
In my previous system, there was a Tyan motherboard with an AMD Athlon 3500+ and an Asus 6800GT graphics card. At some point, the video card kind of broke, after which I got an XFX 8800GT card (and swore never to get Asus again, because the chipset fan on the first Asus motherboard in that system had also died, along with the Asus motherboard in my son's computer). Memory was Corsair ValueSelect, hard disc was a Seagate Barracuda 250 GB (which broke after a while; the first time I ever got a problem with a hard disc). It got replaced by another Barracuda which has never given any problems. At some point, I added a Seagate LP 1.5 TB.
When I moved this system to Windows 7, I did get a couple of BSODs. Not many, perhaps one every two months, but coming from zero, it was an increase. Also, the problem starting popping up that, when a lot of data is written to the 1.5 TB LP drive, applications just... freeze. You get the busy cursor for a couple of minutes, can't even start Task Manager, and after a couple of minutes, everything goes back to normal. This never happened with XP.
At some point, I replaced the motherboard with a Supermicro socket 1366 and an Intel Core i7 960. Memory was Kingston that was specifically tested and approved by Supermicro. It caused more problems with the video card, which was now stressed a lot more, and caused a handful of BSODs. It was fairly old by now, and this country tends to be dusty (and the maid refuses to use a vacuum cleaner - let's just not go there).
So, there was a gainward GTX580 on special offer, and plugged it in, and some of the very strange (software? hardware?) problems experienced with the old card went away. But then I get this cdrom.sys BSOD out of nothing. Sure, it could be the hard disc, but on a system with fairly expensive components that has never ever been overclocked, the only thing I can say is that Windows 7 has caused me more crashes than XP. Few and far between, but still.
Anyway, it's good to know that a BSOD always indicates a hardware issue, and I have a funny feeling it's something to do with the discs. What exactly, however, is a different issue to try and figure out.
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@Severity One said:
<snip> At some point, I added a Seagate LP 1.5 TB. <snip> when a lot of data is written to the 1.5 TB LP drive, applications just... freeze <snip> Anyway, it's good to know that a BSOD always indicates a hardware issue, and I have a funny feeling it's something to do with the discs. What exactly, however, is a different issue to try and figure out.
Just a FWIW: I had a number of the Seagate 1.5TB disks, and had a number of probems, many of which were very subtle. Since many of my systems are near-realtime systems, I am very sensitive to "freeze" even when it is below the threshold of being noticable at the user level. On a whim, I replaced the 1.5TB drives in one system, and no longer experienced that problem. Since then I have removed all of them from my systems, andmany of the issues have al gone away. Nothing conclusive (i.e. a disk test did not fail), but there is other antedoctal evidenve on the internet to support my "feeling" that the drives were indeed the root cause.
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@dhromed said:
Oh, I repair-installed XP a long time ago and it fixed a BSOD upon plugging in my USB camera.
@Severity One said:
Like I said, I've never gotten XP to BSOD on me (as far as I can remember), and 7 a couple of times. I'm not excluding hardware failure (there is some perplexing issues with either SATA drive or both that sometimes freezes all applications for like two minutes), but I've also had the Dell box at work BSOD on me.
Hardware errors can be transient.
Also, I consider the driver for a device part of the hardware for the device, whereas most people dumber than me do not. So keep that in mind.
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@blakeyrat said:
Also, I consider the driver for a device part of the hardware for the device, whereas most people dumber than me do not. So keep that in mind.
So being wrong (considering software as "part of the hardware for the device") makes you smarter?? WTF!
Even worse is how often people consider embedded firmware as "part of the hardware", when clearly is software that is being executed by a processor (of some type).
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@TheCPUWizard said:
@blakeyrat said:
Also, I consider the driver for a device part of the hardware for the device, whereas most people dumber than me do not. So keep that in mind.
So being wrong (considering software as "part of the hardware for the device") makes you smarter?? WTF!
Even worse is how often people consider embedded firmware as "part of the hardware", when clearly is software that is being executed by a processor (of some type).
I don't necessarily agree with Blakey but I at least see what he means: all of the software/firmware pertaining to a device "belongs" to the hardware. Your distinction seems even sillier: of course firmware is software running on a processor, but it's definitely more a part of the device than it is part of the OS..
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@TheCPUWizard said:
@blakeyrat said:
Also, I consider the driver for a device part of the hardware for the device, whereas most people dumber than me do not. So keep that in mind.
So being wrong (considering software as "part of the hardware for the device") makes you smarter?? WTF!
Even worse is how often people consider embedded firmware as "part of the hardware", when clearly is software that is being executed by a processor (of some type).
If I buy a car, I consider the software that ships with that car and is responsible for running that car part of the car. (BTW, so does the car's maker and society-at-large.) When I buy a GPS, I consider the software that displays the map and calculates directions part of the GPS. (And again, so does the GPS' maker and society-at-large.)
When I buy a video card, I consider the software that drives the video card and interfaces it to the computer's OS part of the video card.
What other people are doing is making a special case for computer hardware. "The software is part of the product UNLESS the product is computer hardware, in which case the software is considered separate." I think that's stupid.
I think it's even more stupid when I hear things like, "Creative sound cards are really good, but the drivers suck." Which is it? If the sound card has shitty drivers, it's a shitty sound card-- there's no way to use it without the drivers! So that stupid wrong attitude is contributing to people recommending shitty hardware to other people, which is something I can not get behind.
To hammer in the point: the ONLY reason to run the Creative driver is because you own a Creative sound card. The only way of using a Creative sound card is by running the Creative driver. How does it make sense that the driver is "different" than the card?
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@TheCPUWizard said:
@blakeyrat said:
Also, I consider the driver for a device part of the hardware for the device, whereas most people dumber than me do not. So keep that in mind.
So being wrong (considering software as "part of the hardware for the device") makes you smarter?? WTF!
Even worse is how often people consider embedded firmware as "part of the hardware", when clearly is software that is being executed by a processor (of some type).
Consistency is the hobgoblin of unselfrighteously unangry minds.
@morbiuswilters said:
I don't necessarily agree with Blakey but I at least see what he means: all of the software/firmware pertaining to a device "belongs" to the hardware. Your distinction seems even sillier: of course firmware is software running on a processor, but it's definitely more a part of the device than it is part of the OS.
Firmware gets into a grey area, but device drivers installed into the operating system and existing as files on your hard drive are clearly software.
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@blakeyrat said:
@dhromed said:
@mott555 said:
If you got Windows 7 to BSOD, then you have some kind of hardware or driver failure.
Same for XP. And Vista. And 2K.Not sure about 98 or Me.
The really shocking and annoying part is that we've all been using NT-based OSes for over a decade now, and people still think BSODs can be caused by software.
BSODs are hardware problems. If you have a BSOD, you have a problem with your hardware. Get a hammer and NAIL THAT INTO YOUR HEAD and stop saying it's due to software because it's wrong and bad advice that leads to the suffering of thousands of people with faulty hardware every day who think "well maybe if I just reinstall the BSOD will go away" but it won't because it's a physical problem with their hardware.
Get it? Got it? Good.
That's not necessarily true. Hardware or [i]driver[/i]. Once, I installed a program designed to monitor bandwidth usage because my ISP claimed I was going way over my BW cap (long story, irrelevant to this discussion). It worked great!
Then, it updated one day with a "brand new kernel-level driver designed to provide better stability and more accurate results." Almost immediately, I started getting BSODs. Not putting two and two together, I panicked, thinking it was my hardware. But, once I tried uninstalling the bandwidth program, like magic, pure stability.
But yes, in general, BSOD means something is wrong on your PC at a fundamental level.
Edit: How is it that several people posted, basically debunking what I was trying to say, while I was typing that up? Goddamnit.
Edit 2: Because I am retarded and didn't notice that it wasn't the last post. FFFff-
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@boomzilla said:
Firmware gets into a grey area, but device drivers installed into the operating system and existing as files on your hard drive are clearly software.
From an academic dictionary definition pedantic dickweed perspective, they are indeed software.
From a practical perspective, it makes far more sense to consider them part of the hardware, as we do for EVERY SINGLE OTHER PRODUCT EVER MADE EVER THAT USES BOTH HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE. And I'm all about practical.
If your computer BSODs once an hour due to a hard drive, it doesn't matter whether it's the hard drive's physical circuitry, firmware, or associated driver that's causing the error-- the end result in any case is that removing the hard drive fixes the error.
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@blakeyrat said:
If I buy a car, I consider the software that ships with that car and is responsible for running that car part of the car. (BTW, so does the car's maker and society-at-large.) When I buy a GPS, I consider the software that displays the map and calculates directions part of the GPS. (And again, so does the GPS' maker and society-at-large.)
Awesome! A misleadingly irrelevant car analogy!
@blakeyrat said:
To hammer in the point: the ONLY reason to run the Creative driver is because you own a Creative sound card. The only way of using a Creative sound card is by running the Creative driver. How does it make sense that the driver is "different" than the card?
That's fine and well, I think we'd all agree with you, but are really still trying to say that the part of the "sound card product" that sits on your hard drive is hardware and not software? BTW, it's OK to admit that you're wrong.
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@boomzilla said:
@morbiuswilters said:
I don't necessarily agree with Blakey but I at least see what he means: all of the software/firmware pertaining to a device "belongs" to the hardware. Your distinction seems even sillier: of course firmware is software running on a processor, but it's definitely more a part of the device than it is part of the OS.
Firmware gets into a grey area, but device drivers installed into the operating system and existing as files on your hard drive are clearly software.
I understand how drivers work, but I also understand the distinction Blakey is trying to make. Namely, that talking about hardware and drivers as separate entities usually isn't sensible. For example, someone who is experiencing daily BSODs and who says "Well, it wasn't a hardware problem, it was a driver problem" is being accurate to a fault; a driver problem really is a class of hardware problem.
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@blakeyrat said:
@boomzilla said:
Firmware gets into a grey area, but device drivers installed into the operating system and existing as files on your hard drive are clearly software.
From an academic dictionary definition pedantic dickweed perspective, they are indeed software.
Heaven forbid we use the right words for the right concepts.
@blakeyrat said:
From a practical perspective, it makes far more sense to consider them part of the hardware, as we do for EVERY SINGLE OTHER PRODUCT EVER MADE EVER THAT USES BOTH HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE. And I'm all about practical.If your computer BSODs once an hour due to a hard drive, it doesn't matter whether it's the hard drive's physical circuitry, firmware, or associated driver that's causing the error-- the end result in any case is that removing the hard drive fixes the error.
Sure, you can remove the hard drive. You can also turn off the machine entirely. With respect to classifying drivers as hardware, you're trivially and obviously wrong, and you're just flaunting your poor communications skills.
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The problem with @morbiuswilters said:
@boomzilla said:
@morbiuswilters said:
I don't necessarily agree with Blakey but I at least see what he means: all of the software/firmware pertaining to a device "belongs" to the hardware. Your distinction seems even sillier: of course firmware is software running on a processor, but it's definitely more a part of the device than it is part of the OS.
Firmware gets into a grey area, but device drivers installed into the operating system and existing as files on your hard drive are clearly software.
I understand how drivers work, but I also understand the distinction Blakey is trying to make. Namely, that talking about hardware and drivers as separate entities usually isn't sensible. For example, someone who is experiencing daily BSODs and who says "Well, it wasn't a hardware problem, it was a driver problem" is being accurate to a fault; a driver problem really is a class of hardware problem.
The problem occurs when that approach is taken in various context(s). Look at the last sentance of your post. The fix (for a driver problem causing a BSOD) may very well be a driver SOFTWARE update. Clearly no hardware has changed.
I agree with being pragmatic, but not at the expense of accuracy when the impact is potentially significant. I avoid talking about issues such as this in terms of hardware/software for precisely that reason. A consistent split is to differentiate "The System" (all of the hardware + all software that runs in kernal mode - which includes some of the driver software, notable the part that can cause BSOD), The Operating System (primarily because of perceptions) which contains parts that runs in both Kernel and User Mode, and Applications (which run in User Mode).
Now one can be clear that BSOD's are caused by kernel mode software operations, which can often be triggered by physical hardware conditions [if the software does not see any impact from a hardware failure then there will never be a BSOD]
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@blakeyrat said:
@boomzilla said:
Firmware gets into a grey area, but device drivers installed into the operating system and existing as files on your hard drive are clearly software.
From an academic dictionary definition pedantic dickweed perspective, they are indeed software.
From a practical perspective, it makes far more sense to consider them part of the hardware, as we do for EVERY SINGLE OTHER PRODUCT EVER MADE EVER THAT USES BOTH HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE. And I'm all about practical.
If your computer BSODs once an hour due to a hard drive, it doesn't matter whether it's the hard drive's physical circuitry, firmware, or associated driver that's causing the error-- the end result in any case is that removing the hard drive fixes the error.
No we (the majority of teven semi-echnical people at least do not). We all regularly update the software on out phones, our cable boxes, even our GPS systems. Only the clueless (granted there are many) think that these operations involve changing the HARDWARE. When we take a device back to the store/repair shop and get a different device (or a device with physical parts replaced), then we refer to it as new/replacement hardware.
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@TheCPUWizard said:
The problem occurs when that approach is taken in various context(s). Look at the last sentance of your post. The fix (for a driver problem causing a BSOD) may very well be a driver SOFTWARE update. Clearly no hardware has changed.
So?
Dealerships fix newer cars by updating their software with no hardware changes, we still call it "fixing our car" and not "fixing the software that drives our car". If you're going to pointless antagonize me, you could at least spent a few minutes thinking about the arguments you're making so they aren't so easily countered.
@TheCPUWizard said:
I agree with being pragmatic, but not at the expense of accuracy when the impact is potentially significant. I avoid talking about issues such as this in terms of hardware/software for precisely that reason. A consistent split is to differentiate "The System" (all of the hardware + all software that runs in kernal mode - which includes some of the driver software, notable the part that can cause BSOD), The Operating System (primarily because of perceptions) which contains parts that runs in both Kernel and User Mode, and Applications (which run in User Mode).
Now one can be clear that BSOD's are caused by kernel mode software operations, which can often be triggered by physical hardware conditions [if the software does not see any impact from a hardware failure then there will never be a BSOD]
Blah blah blah, that's all technobabble gibberish. To any user who isn't a pedantic dickweed, you just say, "your computer is BSOD-ing because the hard drive is bad." No more information is needed or desired.
I apologize that I'm not part of your groupthink. And I salute Morbius for having an open mind, whether or not he agrees with me, at least he isn't knee-jerking.
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@blakeyrat said:
To hammer in the point: the ONLY reason to run the Creative driver is because you own a Creative sound card. The only way of using a Creative sound card is by running the Creative driver. How does it make sense that the driver is "different" than the card?
Note that this analogy breaks down on devices where there are third party drivers...
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@MiffTheFox said:
@blakeyrat said:
To hammer in the point: the ONLY reason to run the Creative driver is because you own a Creative sound card. The only way of using a Creative sound card is by running the Creative driver. How does it make sense that the driver is "different" than the card?
Note that this analogy breaks down on devices where there are third party drivers...
Only if there's more than one option.
Which there isn't.
Unless you're a crazy Linux user, in which case you probably caused your own problem by tinkering in the first place. And you're a huge pedantic dickweed, so you'd use the pedantic dickweed terminology anyway. And you hate usability, so you have a vested interest in making things as complicated as possible. Etc.
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@TheCPUWizard said:
The problem occurs when that approach is taken in various context(s). Look at the last sentance of your post. The fix (for a driver problem causing a BSOD) may very well be a driver SOFTWARE update. Clearly no hardware has changed.
I never said it was appropriate in all contexts.
@TheCPUWizard said:
A consistent split is to differentiate "The System" (all of the hardware + all software that runs in kernal mode - which includes some of the driver software, notable the part that can cause BSOD), The Operating System (primarily because of perceptions) which contains parts that runs in both Kernel and User Mode, and Applications (which run in User Mode).
If you want to be pedantic about it, application processes do run in kernel mode when making syscalls (at least in Linux, I'm assuming NT behaves similarly). I understood exactly what you meant, though, so there was no reason for me to argue about it. Sort of like how we understand what Blakey meant and rather than getting into a pedantic pissing match we left well enough alone.
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I vote drivers are software, since I can download them.
I had a driver issue with a person's computer I was casually using where when I plugged in my jump drive into any of the usb ports the computer restarted. Owner's solution just dont plug in any usb device, my solution downloaded the drivers and replaced them, and magicly the computer stopped rebooting (was only a 10 min fix). Aparantly it had been like that for a year (mouse and keyboard were using PS/2 ports so they were not affected by it).
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@morbiuswilters said:
@TheCPUWizard said:
The problem occurs when that approach is taken in various context(s). Look at the last sentance of your post. The fix (for a driver problem causing a BSOD) may very well be a driver SOFTWARE update. Clearly no hardware has changed.
I never said it was appropriate in all contexts.
@TheCPUWizard said:
A consistent split is to differentiate "The System" (all of the hardware + all software that runs in kernal mode - which includes some of the driver software, notable the part that can cause BSOD), The Operating System (primarily because of perceptions) which contains parts that runs in both Kernel and User Mode, and Applications (which run in User Mode).
If you want to be pedantic about it, application processes do run in kernel mode when making syscalls (at least in Linux, I'm assuming NT behaves similarly). I understood exactly what you meant, though, so there was no reason for me to argue about it. Sort of like how we understand what Blakey meant and rather than getting into a pedantic pissing match we left well enough alone.
1) The context being discussed is "ALL BSODs are caused by Hardware Problems". This statement can not be true unless one muddles the definition of software and hardware.
2) Normal applications do NOT call into kernel mode on Windows. Instead they communicate with another thread/process that is running in (or can switch to) kernel mode so there is a boundary. As soon as executable code is in kernel mode, it becomes possible for that software to call the "Display a BSOD routine". his is pTossible under very strange circumstance [and where the process has been granted way too much permission!] furher making the context in #1 untrue.
We all agree (I think we do) that many people are very confused (or downright wong) about what can cause a BSOD, so in that context this is pertinent. So these are not "minute details", they are fundamental to the discussion. Nor is there any intend to "impress others with knowledge" (most of the people actively participating in this discussion already know all of this and have acknowledged that, nor to "attract notice". So the general characterization in your last sentance is completely inappropriate [but I am sure you already knew that]
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@TheCPUWizard said:
2) Normal applications do NOT call into kernel mode on Windows. Instead they communicate with another thread/process that is running in (or can switch to) kernel mode so there is a boundary.
Really? So all syscalls in NT happen over IPC? That sounds a tad inefficient. Also, how does the calling process yield to the worker thread without a syscall? And what prevents any process from firing off a syscall anyway? I guess the kernel handler looks to see if the calling thread is permitted to make syscalls and throws an error?
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@TheCPUWizard said:
We all agree (I think we do) that many people are very confused (or downright wong) about what can cause a BSOD, so in that context this is pertinent.
They're confused because people like you, well-meaning or not, make it too fucking complicated.
Treating drivers as hardware is both simple (now there's only one "thing" in consideration: the piece of hardware causing the fault, removing/disabling the hardware removes the fault), accurate 99.9% of the time, and useful to the recipient of the advice.
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@blakeyrat said:
@TheCPUWizard said:
There is a concept of over simplifying which also causes just as much confusion as over complicating. A Software Developer somewhere spent time developing code that makes up that driver, therefore it is software. By the extension of your argument since all software at some point interacts with hardware it would all end up being called hardware which would really become confusing. And to put this in other terms, I am a driver of a car, but that does not make a car!We all agree (I think we do) that many people are very confused (or downright wong) about what can cause a BSOD, so in that context this is pertinent.
They're confused because people like you, well-meaning or not, make it too fucking complicated.Treating drivers as hardware is both simple (now there's only one "thing" in consideration: the piece of hardware causing the fault, removing/disabling the hardware removes the fault), accurate 99.9% of the time, and useful to the recipient of the advice.
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@morbiuswilters said:
I understand how drivers work, but I also understand the distinction Blakey is trying to make. Namely, that talking about hardware and drivers as separate entities usually isn't sensible. For example, someone who is experiencing daily BSODs and who says "Well, it wasn't a hardware problem, it was a driver problem" is being accurate to a fault; a driver problem really is a class of hardware problem.
Yes, I understand the distinction he's trying to make, too, I just think he's doing it wrong.
To elaborate on what TheCPUWizard said, imagine if someone said, "My Widget device wasn't working. I ran Windows update, and now I'm running a new hardware version, and now my Widget device operates smoothly." According to blakey, that's all correct. The problem is that it didn't change the hardware at all. It changed the software that you were running in order to use the software.
In this case, blakey is simply dumbing down the distinction between hardware and software in a way that isn't useful and makes it more difficult to communicate.
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@blakeyrat said:
Dealerships fix newer cars by updating their software with no hardware changes, we still call it "fixing our car" and not "fixing the software that drives our car". If you're going to pointless antagonize me, you could at least spent a few minutes thinking about the arguments you're making so they aren't so easily countered.
And there is the firmware bit, which is a bit of both hardware and software. Thanks for bringing up this irrelevant point yet again.
@blakeyrat said:
To any user who isn't a pedantic dickweed, you just say, "your computer is BSOD-ing because the hard drive is bad." No more information is needed or desired.
And with hard drives, you're probably correct. But so what?
Suppose you've got something like an expensive large format printer, and everyone can use it just fine but you. Is the printer bad? Perhaps you simply have an outdated driver. If you update your driver, are you going to say that you've updated the printer? If you say yes, then you're just being consistently stupid to avoid admitting that you're just dumbing down the meaning of hardware and software.
You've just made it more difficult to communicate between pedantic dickweeds and regular dickweeds. Worse, the PHB might tell you not to do it, because it's an expensive fucking printer, and no way he's letting you mess with it. What if your update breaks it for everyone else?
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@boomzilla said:
@blakeyrat said:
Dealerships fix newer cars by updating their software with no hardware changes, we still call it "fixing our car" and not "fixing the software that drives our car". If you're going to pointless antagonize me, you could at least spent a few minutes thinking about the arguments you're making so they aren't so easily countered.
And there is the firmware bit, which is a bit of both hardware and software. Thanks for bringing up this irrelevant point yet again.
When I say "car", read "car using actual software, not firmware." Remember, I don't speak pedantic dickweed.
@boomzilla said:
Suppose you've got something like an expensive large format printer, and everyone can use it just fine but you. Is the printer bad? Perhaps you simply have an outdated driver. If you update your driver, are you going to say that you've updated the printer? If you say yes, then you're just being consistently stupid to avoid admitting that you're just dumbing down the meaning of hardware and software.
You just changed the context. Context matters. Changing the context changes the meaning. You've talked to me before. You know this. You're being stupid. Stop being stupid.
We were talking about a BSOD, not a printer not working.
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@blakeyrat said:
When I say "car", read "car using actual software, not firmware." Remember, I don't speak
pedantic dickweedenglish.FTFY. You're getting real close to eliminating software altogether. Or perhaps just complete incoherence.
@blakeyrat said:
@boomzilla said:
Suppose you've got something like an expensive large format printer, and everyone can use it just fine but you. Is the printer bad? Perhaps you simply have an outdated driver. If you update your driver, are you going to say that you've updated the printer? If you say yes, then you're just being consistently stupid to avoid admitting that you're just dumbing down the meaning of hardware and software.
You just changed the context. Context matters. Changing the context changes the meaning. You've talked to me before. You know this. You're being stupid. Stop being stupid.
We were talking about a BSOD, not a printer not working.
Oh, fuck, fill in the goddamn blanks. "Suppose you get a BSOD when you try to print to the printer." It doesn't matter either way. You can refuse to communicate precisely and effectively, but you can't convince everyone that you're right. Next you'll try to convince me that your nervous system is just a part of your muscles, and I'm a pedantic dickweed for disagreeing with you.
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@blakeyrat said:
@TheCPUWizard said:
We all agree (I think we do) that many people are very confused (or downright wong) about what can cause a BSOD, so in that context this is pertinent.
They're confused because people like you, well-meaning or not, make it too fucking complicated.
Treating drivers as hardware is both simple (now there's only one "thing" in consideration: the piece of hardware causing the fault, removing/disabling the hardware removes the fault), accurate 99.9% of the time, and useful to the recipient of the advice.
Treating everything is even simpler. However it violates Einstein's principle when it comes to figuring out the best means for improving the situation.
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@boomzilla said:
To elaborate on what TheCPUWizard said, imagine if someone said, "My Widget device wasn't working. I ran Windows update, and now I'm running a new hardware version, and now my Widget device operates smoothly." According to blakey, that's all correct. The problem is that it didn't change the hardware at all. It changed the software that you were running in order to use the software.
What about CPU microcode updates? Or BIOS updates? Or FPGAs? Honestly, this whole debate is silly.
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@morbiuswilters said:
What about CPU microcode updates? Or BIOS updates? Or FPGAs? Honestly, this whole debate is silly.
Yes, it is silly, and really, it's just one guy insisting that his dumbing down of the language is the only reasonable way to think. The sort of stuff you bring up is at least updating stuff in the hardware in question, which is kinda the point of talking about it as a hybrid of hardware and software. The next step is to talk about how flipping the power switch is a hardware modification.
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@boomzilla said:
@morbiuswilters said:
Well, you ARE changing the circuitry...What about CPU microcode updates? Or BIOS updates? Or FPGAs? Honestly, this whole debate is silly.
Yes, it is silly, and really, it's just one guy insisting that his dumbing down of the language is the only reasonable way to think. The sort of stuff you bring up is at least updating stuff in the hardware in question, which is kinda the point of talking about it as a hybrid of hardware and software. The next step is to talk about how flipping the power switch is a hardware modification.
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@Sutherlands said:
@boomzilla said:
@morbiuswilters said:
What about CPU microcode updates? Or BIOS updates? Or FPGAs? Honestly, this whole debate is silly.
Yes, it is silly, and really, it's just one guy insisting that his dumbing down of the language is the only reasonable way to think. The sort of stuff you bring up is at least updating stuff in the hardware in question, which is kinda the point of talking about it as a hybrid of hardware and software. The next step is to talk about how flipping the power switch is a hardware modification.
Well, you ARE changing the circuitry...Yeah, but you can only do it when you super cool the circuits to get the magic smoke to properly flow. That's what happens when you take your car to the dealership.
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Been using linux for years, yet i'm still the go-to-guy for the family because i don't have trouble setting up/keeping running home net's and use linux (i do most of my stuff in cli).
So to prove BSOD's can be caused by pure software, story time!
My parents' pc (old dell tower from 2001, it never had any hardware probs other than an overheat once, one on my pc's in the other room did so as well).
I was asked to clean the mess because it used to be slow, now it would boot at all (bsod).
After a minute i remembered how to stop the endless rebooting and didn't understand the message the bsod gave (can't remember anything but that is was cryptic, even more than it's stop-codes).
After pulling my linux live cd from my bag, i went exploring...
while copying files to usb drives (32gig usb+fat32 on hd=easy backup) i noticed something... Odd...
The virus-quarantine (i'm sure i spelled that one wrong) was HUGE!
But... there were 2 of them.
Turned out that when they removed norton and installed avira (iirc, could've been mse),
The uninstaller made a mess and only removed half.
Avira and norton were eating eachother and took some stuff from the win folder as well.
Ended up using the install disk (dell still send normal retail disks back then) in recovery mode.
Happened again last year, though i didn't figure out what caused it...
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@roelforg said:
stuffIf we ignore the linux supremacy this makes a good point. ("I use CLI for most tasks" Nobody cares.)
AV software typically installs drivers. Are they hardware? if you update your AV, are you updating your hardware? When the AV kernel driver causes a BSOD, how is this a hardware problem? The entire issue in that case is with software, after all; same with various other similar situations; if you have a driver for mounting ISO files, is it hardware? You can't add and remove disks from it- you can't see the disk drive, it exists solely as software, only providing a virtual hardware device to the system; if it crashes or causes a BSOD; how would this be a hardware problem? The only way this could be a hardware problem is if we follow that all drivers are hardware; but drivers are by their very nature executable code that resides in memory, which is pretty much the exact definition of software, so we're just running around in circles.
When you buy and install a new graphics card, you might say that you upgraded your hardware. but when you install a new OS- which changes all the drivers- or dual boot into a separate OS, or update a driver, I doubt very much that somebody would call that changing the hardware. All that changed is the instructions that are executed dealing with the hardware.
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@TheCPUWizard said:
Just a FWIW: I had a number of the Seagate 1.5TB disks, and had a number of probems, many of which were very subtle. Since many of my systems are near-realtime systems, I am very sensitive to "freeze" even when it is below the threshold of being noticable at the user level. On a whim, I replaced the 1.5TB drives in one system, and no longer experienced that problem. Since then I have removed all of them from my systems, andmany of the issues have al gone away. Nothing conclusive (i.e. a disk test did not fail), but there is other antedoctal evidenve on the internet to support my "feeling" that the drives were indeed the root cause.
It's my gut feeling as well; I just have nothing to pinpoint it. Should have gotten de Fujitsu, but a 2 TB Seagate LP in my wife's computer doesn't cause those problems, at least not that I'm aware of. I'm starting to think that, perhaps, Seagate should no longer be my brand of choice.
And I'm also glad to hear that BSODs aren't necessarily caused by hardware problems only, and that I don't need to nail anything to my forehead, although I am a bit embarrassed that I unwittingly started what is getting close to being a flamewar. But not matter. :)
Anyway, 'driver.sys' sounds like something that is part of Windows itself. Even if it is a device driver (I really don't know that much about Windows; I'm more into Unix/Java), you'll have a hard time convincing me that something coming from Microsoft is part of the hardware.
Oh, for the good old days of the Amiga, where you could load the libraries and device drivers on the expansion card itself... although arguably, that's a WTF in itself.
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@roelforg said:
So to prove BSOD's can be caused by pure software, story time!
My parents' pc (old dell tower from 2001...
Turned out that when they removed norton and installed avira (iirc, could've been mse),
The uninstaller made a mess and only removed half.
Avira and norton were eating eachother and took some stuff from the win folder as well.Good point: putting a shotgun to Window's head and pulling the trigger can also fuck things up. Then again, if I start randomly deleting libs from a Linux machine things are going to go to hell pretty quickly. Also, if it was from 2001 then it's likely it was an ME machine and nobody here was talking about that.
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@Severity One said:
Oh, for the good old days of the Amiga, where you could load the libraries and device drivers on the expansion card itself...
Why do people always get all nostalgic for the days when computers were too weak to do much of value? Nobody should miss that shit, it's like missing the days when blacks got lynched for drinking out of the white man's water fountain and wimmen couldn't vote. Only a sicko would miss those days.
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@morbiuswilters said:
Only a sicko would miss those days.
Certainly there are no sickos on this forum.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@roelforg said:
So to prove BSOD's can be caused by pure software, story time!
My parents' pc (old dell tower from 2001...
Turned out that when they removed norton and installed avira (iirc, could've been mse),
The uninstaller made a mess and only removed half.
Avira and norton were eating eachother and took some stuff from the win folder as well.Good point: putting a shotgun to Window's head and pulling the trigger can also fuck things up. Then again, if I start randomly deleting libs from a Linux machine things are going to go to hell pretty quickly. Also, if it was from 2001 then it's likely it was an ME machine and nobody here was talking about that.
The linux line was an disclaimer incase someone here spotted something obvious i missed and i'd get h*** for that.
Win XP ran on the pc.
And it wasn't my fault,
when i ran norton uninstall, i selected the "delete every trace of norton" option, believing it did what it said.
So it ran fine for a few days with avira, i was relieved that i didn't break anything.
Then nortons uninstall problems came...
Norton hadn't deleted the scanserver (the exe doing the real scanning), or it's scheduled job.
When the scan started, some drivers (the ones avira overwrote) didn't match the expectation,
norton thinks: virus!! norton removes them.
Without the frontend, nobody was told about this.
Parents reboot pc.
Windows can't read deleted drivers, windows balks and reboots.
When dealing with windows i hate bootproblems because it's hard to fix those. <shameless ad> Unlike my linux systems where you can delete the kernel without preventing me from fixing it in 30 minutes.</shameless ad>
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@roelforg said:
When dealing with windows i hate bootproblems because it's hard to fix those.
It's not hard to put the Windows DVD in the drive and do a repair from it.
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@Scarlet Manuka said:
@roelforg said:
When dealing with windows i hate bootproblems because it's hard to fix those.
It's not hard to put the Windows DVD in the drive and do a repair from it.How do you think i fixed it? (Correct answer: Digging through drawers and finding the dell-disks, having them fix it).
I formulated that sentence you quoted wrong,
i meant it's hard to fix without possibly deleting all personal settings (no kidding, i needed to use the disks on my friend's pc twice but i didn't know about a hidden command that told it to retain certain folders, though Dell's disks may be at fault here; they bought the pc before Dell sold crap hw, but after they started bundeling crapware, after setup i reinstalled several drivers from the hwvendor (not dell but for example from realtek for sound, etc...) because dell's were bloated).
EDIT (cs cut my post):
Besides, when windows has boot issues, you only have stopcodes with terse/cryptic descriptions of the problem to go by. That's why i always get nervous when win has issues but don't really have any problems repairing stuff when linux crashes (if it does, only ever had that with a failed upgrade and a while when the gpu crashed after 1 hour (problem was that my screen was reporting corrupted edid info and the gpu choked on that)).
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Too late to edit.
In my prev. Post "having them fix it", them was referring to the disk, not the parents
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@morbiuswilters said:
@Severity One said:
So what were you doing at the time that computers were too weak to do much of value? Cleaning toilets at a railway station?Oh, for the good old days of the Amiga, where you could load the libraries and device drivers on the expansion card itself...
Why do people always get all nostalgic for the days when computers were too weak to do much of value? Nobody should miss that shit, it's like missing the days when blacks got lynched for drinking out of the white man's water fountain and wimmen couldn't vote. Only a sicko would miss those days.
The point of putting device drivers (and libraries) on the expansion card itself, like was the case with Amiga AutoConfig devices, was that the device driver [u]was[/u] indeed part of the hardware: it got installed automagically as soon as you plugged in the card into your Amiga. True plug-and-play.
The obvious disadvantages are that it's a bugger to release a fix, and that the hardware is tied to the software (and CPU architecture), rather than the other way around. But as a concept, it was nice.
What was also very nice in AmigaDOS, and which I haven't seen replicated anywhere else, is the option to assign a symbolic name to a directory or group of directories. Not all things in the past were bad, you know.
As an example, Albert Einstein liked to hand out sweets (candy) to children. These days, this might be cause to be invited at the station for an interview.
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@Severity One said:
@TheCPUWizard said:
Just a FWIW: I had a number of the Seagate 1.5TB disks, and had a number of probems, many of which were very subtle. Since many of my systems are near-realtime systems, I am very sensitive to "freeze" even when it is below the threshold of being noticable at the user level. On a whim, I replaced the 1.5TB drives in one system, and no longer experienced that problem. Since then I have removed all of them from my systems, andmany of the issues have al gone away. Nothing conclusive (i.e. a disk test did not fail), but there is other antedoctal evidenve on the internet to support my "feeling" that the drives were indeed the root cause.
It's my gut feeling as well; I just have nothing to pinpoint it. Should have gotten de Fujitsu, but a 2 TB Seagate LP in my wife's computer doesn't cause those problems, at least not that I'm aware of. I'm starting to think that, perhaps, Seagate should no longer be my brand of choice.
And I'm also glad to hear that BSODs aren't necessarily caused by hardware problems only, and that I don't need to nail anything to my forehead, although I am a bit embarrassed that I unwittingly started what is getting close to being a flamewar. But not matter. :)
Anyway, 'driver.sys' sounds like something that is part of Windows itself. Even if it is a device driver (I really don't know that much about Windows; I'm more into Unix/Java), you'll have a hard time convincing me that something coming from Microsoft is part of the hardware.
Oh, for the good old days of the Amiga, where you could load the libraries and device drivers on the expansion card itself... although arguably, that's a WTF in itself.
I have had no problems wit either the 1TB or the 2TB versions, just the 1.5TB, so I dont believe (at least my problems to be) "Seagate problem" in general, just a specific model [an sufficient serial / lots to minimize it just being a random issue].
