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Why Windows 95 and 98 would crash after 49.7 days of uptime

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Re: Why Windows 95 and 98 would crash after 49.7 days of uptime

#71

Post by rcxdude »

derefr wrote: post #66
baybal2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think having to disable the autoupdate in win10 is the most requested thing for IT helpdesks these days. As a result of this complete ignorance to ergonomics, the windows ecosystem is returning back to WinXP years, and windows users are now getting pwned by years old exploits again. I think microsoft best achievement in win7 was that it was working "out of the box" without having to hack it. Now, win10 again requir…

> Now, win10 again requires to be hacked right out of the box just to work. Or, to rephrase that (from Microsoft's—and most IT departments'—perspective): Windows now works , as once again users with broken workflows are now forced into fiddly sub-optimal patterns for using the OS, which are more work to maintain than just correcting their workflow. (And IT departments are empowered to not even allow these fiddly sub-…

Still doesn't work for all cases. At my work we had a system running a control loop reboot due to updates, which reset a system which had been stabilising for weeks (we had tried to stop it updating, unsuccessfully as it turned out). Windows is basically rendering itself unsuitable for running such a system because of their update policy (which is a shame when the systems necessary for running the control loop depend on it).

Re: Why Windows 95 and 98 would crash after 49.7 days of uptime

#72

Post by derefr »

rcxdude wrote: post #71
derefr wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, win10 again requires to be hacked right out of the box just to work. Or, to rephrase that (from Microsoft's—and most IT departments'—perspective): Windows now works , as once again users with broken workflows are now forced into fiddly sub-optimal patterns for using the OS, which are more work to maintain than just correcting their workflow. (And IT departments are empowered to not even allow these fiddly sub-…

Still doesn't work for all cases. At my work we had a system running a control loop reboot due to updates, which reset a system which had been stabilising for weeks (we had tried to stop it updating, unsuccessfully as it turned out). Windows is basically rendering itself unsuitable for running such a system because of their update policy (which is a shame when the systems necessary for running the control loop depend…

I mean... shouldn't those systems be running Windows IoT Core (nee Windows Embedded)? That branch doesn't have auto updates, AFAIK.

Re: Why Windows 95 and 98 would crash after 49.7 days of uptime

#73

Post by baybal2 »

derefr wrote: post #72
rcxdude wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still doesn't work for all cases. At my work we had a system running a control loop reboot due to updates, which reset a system which had been stabilising for weeks (we had tried to stop it updating, unsuccessfully as it turned out). Windows is basically rendering itself unsuitable for running such a system because of their update policy (which is a shame when the systems necessary for running the control loop depend…

I mean... shouldn't those systems be running Windows IoT Core ( nee Windows Embedded)? That branch doesn't have auto updates, AFAIK.

These systems shouldn't be running Windows to begin with

Re: Why Windows 95 and 98 would crash after 49.7 days of uptime

#74

Post by usr1106 »

derefr wrote: post #65
usr1106 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. If you stick to open source, then you can always know how programmers got it wrong in the past and present.

No, that allows you to know how programmers of FOSS got it wrong. Not all programming is the same; there are many lessons to learn about software engineering (mostly in the "what not to do" sense) which, for practical reasons, have only ever showed up in (time- and budget-constrained) closed-source codebases.

Do you you have any fact-based evidence that certain bugs/anti-patterns would happen less in open source code bases or free software code bases?

Well, security by obscurity might happen a bit less. And hopefully many bugs in contributions are spotted instead of being merged because the author thinks it should work. But all major open source projects have had amazingly "stupid" programming bugs that went undiscovered for many years. Or the same feature has been patched again and again, but still causes more trouble.

Knowing that many company-internal software projects work with little review and very low testing coverage, it should be natural that their code quality is even worse. But that certain kinds of problems would only occur in closed source does not sound evident to me.

Re: Why Windows 95 and 98 would crash after 49.7 days of uptime

#75

Post by derefr »

usr1106 wrote: post #74
derefr wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that allows you to know how programmers of FOSS got it wrong. Not all programming is the same; there are many lessons to learn about software engineering (mostly in the "what not to do" sense) which, for practical reasons, have only ever showed up in (time- and budget-constrained) closed-source codebases.

Do you you have any fact-based evidence that certain bugs/anti-patterns would happen less in open source code bases or free software code bases? Well, security by obscurity might happen a bit less. And hopefully many bugs in contributions are spotted instead of being merged because the author thinks it should work. But all major open source projects have had amazingly "stupid" programming bugs that went undiscovered…

> Do you you have any fact-based evidence that certain bugs/anti-patterns would happen less in open source code bases or free software code bases?

How could I have that, or the opposite of that, without access to closed-source code-bases?

That was my whole point: that you can't know what sort of selection bias you're implicitly accepting by only looking at a certain easily-accessible slice of the data.

In order to know that it's safe to assume that FOSS is representative of all software, you first have to get access to enough non-FOSS codebases to be representative.

Re: Why Windows 95 and 98 would crash after 49.7 days of uptime

#76

Post by usr1106 »

me_me_me wrote: post #63
usr1106 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree. Nobody of the readers would care about the programming error made 25 years ago in some closed source code. However, timers wrapping around is a very current problem every programmer should be aware of. Not too long ago we had a problem with corrupted video files. After weeks of investigation it turned out that some code used an 32 bit unsigned to count microseconds. Well, that wraps around after approx…

Then tile is misleading. This is a running theme on HN: Why X does Y? Well we don't know but let me talk abut Z in relation to X.

Because they didn't handle an integer timer wrapping around correctly. That answers most of the question. What remains is did they forget altogether or program it incorrectly. I'd say I have seen worse click bait, this post didn't annoy me even if the analysis was much simpler than a Google project zero blog post.

Did you seriously expect to see Windows source code published? AFAIK it is still under strict NDA regardless of how old it is or did I miss some headlines?

Re: Why Windows 95 and 98 would crash after 49.7 days of uptime

#77

Post by jimnotgym »

rcxdude wrote: post #71
derefr wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, win10 again requires to be hacked right out of the box just to work. Or, to rephrase that (from Microsoft's—and most IT departments'—perspective): Windows now works , as once again users with broken workflows are now forced into fiddly sub-optimal patterns for using the OS, which are more work to maintain than just correcting their workflow. (And IT departments are empowered to not even allow these fiddly sub-…

Still doesn't work for all cases. At my work we had a system running a control loop reboot due to updates, which reset a system which had been stabilising for weeks (we had tried to stop it updating, unsuccessfully as it turned out). Windows is basically rendering itself unsuitable for running such a system because of their update policy (which is a shame when the systems necessary for running the control loop depend…

I can't say this chimes with me at all. I have seen plenty of Windows server 2016 (W10 for servers ish) stay up for over a year. On an AD network you control the update policy! I can stop all of my clients updating with a group policy.

Re: Why Windows 95 and 98 would crash after 49.7 days of uptime

#78

Post by jimnotgym »

baybal2 wrote: post #44
tsomctl wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm proud that I haven't rebooted in 72 days. The last clause was me acknowledging that this isn't good computer hygiene. edit: And I'm trying to help other people. I know how infuriating it is to have your computer restart in the middle of something, and the above fix is pretty straightforward.

I think having to disable the autoupdate in win10 is the most requested thing for IT helpdesks these days. As a result of this complete ignorance to ergonomics, the windows ecosystem is returning back to WinXP years, and windows users are now getting pwned by years old exploits again. I think microsoft best achievement in win7 was that it was working "out of the box" without having to hack it. Now, win10 again requir…

> I think having to disable the autoupdate in win10 is the most requested thing for IT helpdesks these days.

That has not happened even once to me, and what company allows users to decide?

I can tell you that the majority of calls to my desk from mac users are a direct result of not updating. The Windows machines all have their updates controlled by WSUS, a standard component on an AD network. I have very close to zero problems with Windows 10 updates.

Re: Why Windows 95 and 98 would crash after 49.7 days of uptime

#79

Post by ggambetta »

usr1106 wrote: post #76
me_me_me wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then tile is misleading. This is a running theme on HN: Why X does Y? Well we don't know but let me talk abut Z in relation to X.

Because they didn't handle an integer timer wrapping around correctly. That answers most of the question. What remains is did they forget altogether or program it incorrectly. I'd say I have seen worse click bait, this post didn't annoy me even if the analysis was much simpler than a Google project zero blog post. Did you seriously expect to see Windows source code published? AFAIK it is still under strict NDA regard…

I've read several blog posts that actually go and analyze why a bug happens, by disassembling DLLs or whatever they need to do. So yes, with a title like that, I do expect more than "oh, it's probably related to integer overflow somehow."

Re: Why Windows 95 and 98 would crash after 49.7 days of uptime

#80

Post by jimnotgym »

tsomctl wrote: post #14
7777fps wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're oddly proud about not having updated your OS for 72 days.

No, I'm proud that I haven't rebooted in 72 days. The last clause was me acknowledging that this isn't good computer hygiene. edit: And I'm trying to help other people. I know how infuriating it is to have your computer restart in the middle of something, and the above fix is pretty straightforward.

> how infuriating it is to have your computer restart in the middle of something

That last happened to me a couple of years ago and I used Windows 10 every day since.

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