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Steve Ballmer did not write the text for the blue screen of death

devblogs.microsoft.com

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Re: Steve Ballmer did not write the text for the blue screen of death

#4
post #3

The comments at the end are marvelous.

I get > 0 comments > Comments are closed. Login to edit/delete your existing comments

I presume they're referring, not to blog comments by visitors, but to Chen's own comments (or commentary, if you prefer) in the footnote at the end.

Re: Steve Ballmer did not write the text for the blue screen of death

#7
> What was new in Windows 3.1 was a special handler for Ctrl+Alt+Del which tried to identify the program that was not responding and give you the opportunity to terminate it.

This worked 1% of the time. Because of the cooperative multitasking in win 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98 and Me the usual way out of this was reset or power off. Sometimes pressing the Ctrl+Alt+DEL will reboot the computer.

Re: Steve Ballmer did not write the text for the blue screen of death

#8
post #7

> What was new in Windows 3.1 was a special handler for Ctrl+Alt+Del which tried to identify the program that was not responding and give you the opportunity to terminate it. This worked 1% of the time. Because of the cooperative multitasking in win 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98 and Me the usual way out of this was reset or power off. Sometimes pressing the Ctrl+Alt+DEL will reboot the computer.

> This worked 1% of the time. Because of the cooperative multitasking in win 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98 and Me the usual way out of this was reset or power off.

Only Win 3.1 used cooperative multitasking (and only when running on a 286). All others used preemptive multitasking.

Re: Steve Ballmer did not write the text for the blue screen of death

#9
post #8
post #7

> What was new in Windows 3.1 was a special handler for Ctrl+Alt+Del which tried to identify the program that was not responding and give you the opportunity to terminate it. This worked 1% of the time. Because of the cooperative multitasking in win 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98 and Me the usual way out of this was reset or power off. Sometimes pressing the Ctrl+Alt+DEL will reboot the computer.

> This worked 1% of the time. Because of the cooperative multitasking in win 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98 and Me the usual way out of this was reset or power off. Only Win 3.1 used cooperative multitasking (and only when running on a 286). All others used preemptive multitasking.

I stand corrected.

Re: Steve Ballmer did not write the text for the blue screen of death

#10
post #8
post #7

> What was new in Windows 3.1 was a special handler for Ctrl+Alt+Del which tried to identify the program that was not responding and give you the opportunity to terminate it. This worked 1% of the time. Because of the cooperative multitasking in win 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98 and Me the usual way out of this was reset or power off. Sometimes pressing the Ctrl+Alt+DEL will reboot the computer.

> This worked 1% of the time. Because of the cooperative multitasking in win 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98 and Me the usual way out of this was reset or power off. Only Win 3.1 used cooperative multitasking (and only when running on a 286). All others used preemptive multitasking.

Windows 3.1 on a 386 used preemptive multitasking, yes, but only between Windows as a whole and other DOS programs you were running. Within Windows, win16 apps were cooperatively multitasked even on a 386.