Vista does not crash gracefully, it falls flat on its face. this will make another funny Apple TV co

[Adam Albright]

Programs that stop working are a fact of life. Ever since XP came out
applications are suppose to run in their own "protected" memory space
so if they crash, they don't take down the whole system with them.
Operative word, that's how it USED TO BE.

I'm in the process of testing a upgraded version of Cyberlink's Power
Producer, a utility to do some simple DVD burning and other similar
tasks. It has been working for several days without problem. Now I
just clicked on its shortcut and it hung up. That isn't why I'm
writing.

Rather the issue is how you CAN'T gracefully recover from a crashing
application like you did in XP. At least I couldn't, at least not this
time, since it is the first "crash" since installing Vista, I'm not
sure if this is normal or not. Geez, I hope not!

If any of your software crashed in XP, you could do the old three
finger salute, holding down the Ctrl, Alt, and Delete keys at one
time, which would bring up Windows Task Manager. This allowed you to
stop a application that no longer was responding to Windows. That
feature is changed in Vista. The new sequence is Ctrl, Shift, Esc.
You would think Microsoft would tell people that made a needless in
picking which keys saves Microsoft's ass, but nope.

I try the new key combination. Nothing happens. Windows is locked up
good. Rats!

With Power Producer crashing, Windows too is locked up. Not suppose to
happen. No graceful way to shut down my other RUNNING applications. So
I just sit waiting to see what if anything would happen.

Couple minutes go by, oh look.... Windows did manage to show the Power
Producer window in a new washed out view. Cute, but not helpful. Vista
seems more about being "pretty", then useful.

Still everything locked up. Another minute goes by, oh look, Windows
now has faded out my entire desktop, maybe that's a new visual clue
that Windows has given up the ghost and wants to do to a hard
shutdown. I still can't shut down Power Producer the normal way or the
brute force way from Task Manger. Nor can I access or close any of the
other six applications that are running.

That creates a problem. I'm in the process of rendering a large video
file, A big project, hours away from finishing, obviously pointless to
not reboot since everything seems locked up. Even the clock stopped. I
sure sign Windows died.

However if I do a forced shutdown by pusing and holding the power
switch on my PC I run the risk of corrupting the source file that my
video project is based on plus who knows what harm it could do to any
other open files, including Windows System files.

Oh well, what choice do I have. So I do a forced shutdown, then reboot
and immediately go to the Event Viewer to see if Windows can say what
happened.

It says this:

"Faulting application Producer.exe, version 4.0.0.1024, time stamp
0x453e08a0, faulting module MFC71U.DLL, version 7.10.3077.0, time
stamp 0x3e77fc29, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x0005c598,
process id 0x110, application start time 0x01c754731e0dba67."

Vista does not crash gracefully, it falls flat on its face. I can live
with a application crashing. By the way its "Vista Ready" or so it
claims.

http://www.cyberlink.com/multi/products/main_3_ENU.html

I thought the days of Windows crashing due to a hung application were
pre XP vents. I guess Microsoft brought the good old days back.

 

[Guest]

:

.....

If any of your software crashed in XP, you could do the old three
finger salute, holding down the Ctrl, Alt, and Delete keys at one
time, which would bring up Windows Task Manager. This allowed you to
stop a application that no longer was responding to Windows. That
feature is changed in Vista. The new sequence is Ctrl, Shift, Esc.

Well, Adam, Ctrl, Alt, Delete works for me in Vista Ultimate, taking me to a
small list of things I can do, and the Task Manager is a choice in that list.

 

[Adam Albright]

:

....

Well, Adam, Ctrl, Alt, Delete works for me in Vista Ultimate, taking me to a
small list of things I can do, and the Task Manager is a choice in that list.

I don't have Ultimate, I have the business version. I remember reading
they changed it. Good thing since the system was locked up. Now that
my system isn't locked up anymore I see both work but differently.

In the business version as I said, Ctrl-Shift-Esc takes you directly
to Task Manager like it did in XP and I just checked that is the
prescribed method according to Vista's built-in help sytem if you type
in Task Manager in Vista Help, then click on #3, which is What is Task
Manger?

Now trying the old Ctrl-Alt-Del now thhat my system is working it
takes you make a menu page that offers, lock, switch user, log off,
change password and lastly Task Manager.

Just for fun see if Ctrl-Shift-Esc works in Ultimate.

 

[Scott]

It says this:

"Faulting application Producer.exe, version 4.0.0.1024, time stamp
0x453e08a0, faulting module MFC71U.DLL, version 7.10.3077.0, time
stamp 0x3e77fc29, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x0005c598,
process id 0x110, application start time 0x01c754731e0dba67."

By the way its "Vista Ready" or so it claims.

Which is not the same as an app carrying the "Certified for Windows
Vista" logo, which BTW, their PowerDVD 7 software is (Unlike Power
Producer)

I'd suggest a visit to
http://www.cyberlink.com/english/cs/support/new_site/support_index.html

--
Scott http://angrykeyboarder.com

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
NOTICE: In-Newsgroup (and therefore off-topic) comments on my sig will
be cheerfully ignored, so don't waste our time.

 

[Brian W]

PowerProducer v.4 is installed on my system and running perfectly.

 

[DevilsPGD]

In message <[email protected]> Adam Albright

That creates a problem. I'm in the process of rendering a large video
file, A big project, hours away from finishing, obviously pointless to
not reboot since everything seems locked up. Even the clock stopped. I
sure sign Windows died.

Here is your problem -- Windows wasn't totally frozen, but rather, an
app did something naughty. This typically indicates a hardware fault,
I've seen the same while running two DVD burners at the same time, or
with bad RAM. (XP, for the record)

It could also be as simple as an app setting itself to "Real-time"
(which effectively bypasses the preemptive task switcher) and then
locking up.

Badly written apps that interface with hardware or run as an
administrator will always be able to crash or otherwise damage a running
system, that's basically a fact of life.

However if I do a forced shutdown by pusing and holding the power
switch on my PC I run the risk of corrupting the source file that my
video project is based on plus who knows what harm it could do to any
other open files, including Windows System files.

NTFS? In that case, nothing goes wrong unless you changed the drive
performance to cache more dangerously. NTFS is journaled, which means
that at most you'll lose the files that were written to the cache but
not flushed, but the filesystem itself will be maintained (essentially,
rather then rewriting critical parts of the filesystem, NTFS writes the
critical bits to a new place on the drive, then updates a pointer to
that new place, then updates a SECOND pointer to the new data -- At no
time are any of the disk structures at any risk)

 

[DevilsPGD]

In message <[email protected]> Adam Albright

Now trying the old Ctrl-Alt-Del now thhat my system is working it
takes you make a menu page that offers, lock, switch user, log off,
change password and lastly Task Manager.

This is the same as all versions of windows from NT 3.5.1 (or earlier)
and up -- The only real change is that in XP, Ctrl-Alt-Del wouldn't
bring up the menu, it would only bring up the Task Manager if Windows
only has a single active user without a password.

Domain users always got the menu, as (I believe) did all systems that
require a login.

Just for fun see if Ctrl-Shift-Esc works in Ultimate.

It does... This shortcut has been there since 2000 (or earlier, I don't
have an NT4 box to play with right now)

 

[ray]

You might try Linux. I've run Linux on about a dozen computers for over
five years. During that time, I have NEVER seen a Linux computer crash,
short of a hardware problem.