Windows Fails 8% of the Time 913
descubes writes "A Journal du Net article reports that about 8% of Windows sessions require a machine reboot.
The relevant quote (translated from french) is: "The average rate of failures requiring a system reboot has been measured at around 8% per session. This number varies widely depending on the version of Windows. Windows 2000 has a failure rate of 4%, and NT4 is at 3%, whereas Windows XP is close to 12%." The study was originally made by Acadys and Microcost and gathered data from 1.2M machines belonging to about one thousand companies over a period of one month in seven different countries."
Biased (Score:5, Interesting)
Not all cleanly installed updated boxen though eh? (Score:3, Interesting)
My point simply is usually its not Windows XP faulting for me, its something else not getting along with it. Be it [insert]ware, or hardware issues. Good example is I hardly ever reboot this computer, it has easily gained weeks of uptime, usually only shutting down due to thunderstorms taking out the electrical lines.
The most important message here... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is about rebooting. A crash is not the only time Windows forces you to reboot. You say you shut down daily - only Windows users would regard that as normal.
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:1, Interesting)
if you turn the BSoD back to "stay on error message" rather then "just reboot" you might start to notice XP crashing again.
What do we know? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you have your PC at home, you shut down at night so you can save electricity, and stop the noise from the fans.
If you're at work, sure you have less incentive to shut down, except to save electricity again. (save the planet, man)
Personally, I leave my w2k work box running all the time, but even then it gets shut down for the weekend.
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:2, Interesting)
You've hit the nail right on the head, and done it without any OS-based zealotry.
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just kidding. Although I do love the story about the Novell server at some University (in Florida, I believe) which had been running for several years with no reboots and no problems. One day some brilliant tech decided to look for the server and realized that it wasn't there. Nowhere to be found.
Fast forward a couple more years, they were doing construction, and found the server had somehow been put in a closet that had been bricked over - meaning that the server had been running without intervention for close to 5 years without a reboot or software updated. Go Novell! Running on Compaq hardware, IIRC.
The Windows users are eating plenty of poultry (Score:5, Interesting)
Still, we can't blame Microsoft for a lot of the instability since there are so many users out there using terrible and/or outdated drivers. Microsoft cannot be blamed for the quality of the drivers that most Windows users have because they didn't write them.
Of course I will say this about Windows. It is nice for the first few months, but then it just begins to become as sensually appealing as a rotten piece of bait fish left on your back porch for a few days in the sun. My Macs frequently have several times the uptimes of the Windows PCs I hear about and the Windows users are shocked, "why are 8 weeks of uptime, your PowerBook is still fast and usable."
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:2, Interesting)
One Win2K server I helped maintain had a better uptime than most of our Suns and other Unix boxes. Mostly because it was well protected from the 'net and we didn't patch it.
As far as other OSs, my Linux servers also run 24/7 and have a high uptime. However, as of late, we've been notified (by the various distribution patch notification tools) of more software patches than on Windows by a long shot. My SuSE 9.1 Professional box, for instance, hasn't gone a week without at least two patch sessions for the last two months, but only a few of those have required reboots (kernel patch).
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not Killing Process/Programs? (Score:3, Interesting)
Ocassionally, while running Doom3, I might hard lock-- My office isn't well insulated, and my machine can get pretty hot when stressed.. Plus I'm running hacked drivers on my video card, so I don't really blame anybody but myself. Otherwise, I cannot remember the last time I HAD to reboot other than software/driver installation.. (And driver installation doesn't always require that anymore...)
This level of stability, in my experience, is virtually the same in Linux.. It runs programs that ocassionally crash, or you have to kill em, and you can get hardware video lockups causing a reboot if you try to do "daring" things (which most people don't do because of the lack of games/3D apps for linux.) I'm not trolling here, just trying to objectively compare the situation..
I think this is just part of computing-- and maybe all OS'es can do a better job of recognizing what apps are really crashed, and helping the user dispose of them a bit better.
Re:No way... (Score:3, Interesting)
It might be more appropriate to keep track of how often people need to reboot.
Re:Puh-lease (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm basing my assertion on experience. I am the IT manager/network admin of hundreds of computers, and I used to work for the Navy, where we had a very large IT department. In my experience, XP is extremely stable. Lots of times you can do simple things like restart a service to "repair" the system without a restart. There's no doubt in my mind that thing that Linux users do would NEVER be done by a Windows user.
After all, if my Linux box has a problem, I'll drop out to the terminal (Al+F1), login, su to root, kill -9 the hanging process, shutdown offending services/threads, and manually relaunch them.
On XP, Explorer and other process will restart themselves if they crash, but sometimes you have to wait. And other times it needs a push. I'm willing to bet the average XP user, at first glance, reboots. Does that count?
Re:Somewhat misleading (Score:2, Interesting)
My own experience is almost never having to reboot on WinXP Pro. I have 3 machines running all the time and except for some hardware or software installs that may require a shut down or warm reboot they just run 24/7. My media server is XP pro and it never dies - and I'm running it on an old POS P3 with 512 RAM. Myself, I think XP Pro is extremely stable - not perfect, but stable.
I think casual users versus knowledgeable users is a big factor here in the study. A properly managed box can run for a really long time without interference. Some may claim that the degree of knowledge required to "properly manage" a WinXP Pro box is too high a threshold for the casual user - so that might be true, but the same is true of Linux and most OSS.
Personally, I don't see that as a totally bad thing. People should have a solid understanding of what is going on with their boxes. Once upon a time I knew far less and my satisfaction as a computer user suffered for it - I was a clueless idiot and bad stuff was always happening to me because of it. Now I know at least something about what I am doing and I am a far happier user - stuff almost never goes wrong.
Somebody should do a new study on knowledge as relates to satisfaction of use of a product. I just bet the more you know about something the happier you are in relation to it. Satisfaction comes from knowing the product inside and out - because while you may become familiar with the product's shortcomings you will also come to know how to easily work around those shortcomings to get what you need out of a given product.
Format Invervals? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally I blame the craptastic drivers from both nVidia and ATi. They're hell-bent on getting the most flips per flooble and the stability of the drivers suck.
ATi adds a lame new interface (which crashes) called "Catalyst Control Center" while the actual usability of the drivers is swirling down the toilet. All new releases focus on little tweaks in their $500 dollar range cards to make it benchmark fastest in Doom 3, while support for the cards people actually own dwindles.
For instance, if I try to play Doom 3 with anything higher than "Medium" settings, my machine will hardlock. Radeon 9800, no tweaking or overclocking, just the latest "stable" drivers.
This isn't an anti-ATi rant, I had the same bullshit with nVidia.
Barring a hardware faulure, it's virtually always the video drivers fault, since it actually has the power to bring down the system.
I'd say the higher instance of XP bombs reflects it's status as the current PC gaming platform.
I blame nVidia, ATi, and Microsoft for "certifying" their instable, shit drivers. Driver certification really just means your check cleared.
What can they do about it, though? I'd gladly sacrifice a few FPS for a stable machine. But when a driver release gets less "3DMarks" than the one before it, the little kids throw a fit on rage3d and other sites.
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:3, Interesting)
What is worse, is the 20 minute rule (Score:5, Interesting)
Out of the box home windows xp has on average 20 minutes (if on a uni network, much less) before it is taken over.
corporate networks should all now be firewalled... shouldn't they?
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:4, Interesting)
My XP box is pretty stable, but I have had it blue-screen (although it is a nice shade of blue in XP), a few times, doing fairly normal things..
I update regularly, and would say that XP seems more stable that any version of windows I've used. But I don't really use it that often, only the odd time when I must use windows and wine does not suffice.
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, I understand the point you're getting at. I personally leave my zd7000 running 24/7 because most of the time I'm leaving it to do a render overnight or something. Most PCs in offices ought to be based on Transmeta or Via low-power CPUs anyway, seeing all they do is web surf, word process, and remote sessions.
Re:No way...(consider this) (Score:4, Interesting)
Crashing and requiring a reboot are two different things. I use XP at work too. I have ZERO spyware on it. It is for work, I use it for work only. No button bars, no cute apps. The only thing I use personally on it are Opera, PuTTY, and an old version of Winamp. I have to reboot about twice a week.
If people need to reboot 12% of the time, then they are doing something wrong. It's not the OS, but more the user in my opinion. XP is a stable system, and does a good job of keeping my machines running.
I have a good idea why my system needs to be rebooted, it is some of the apps I run - mainly certain Rational tools. Sure, on Win98 it would blue screen and crash. XP will just slow to a near halt or start behaving very oddly. Reboots are part of Microsoft OS maintenance. If there is a problem with your machine - reboot. SOP, everywhere I have been.
Even if XP is stable, if it allows applications to bring it down and make it unusable, then the PC isn't stable - period. If the OS can't control it, then it is the fault of the OS.
Hey, I have problems at home on my Linux machine too. Apps will cause X to freak out, and I have had to reboot because I don't know how to cleanly shutdown X remotely or from a console. I am sure there is a way, it just happens so infrequently I haven't bothered to find out. Sometimes Opera will crash X, or if I am messing around with settings on Mplayer, it will freeze it. I used to have problems with my Xfs (font server) crashing all the time, but that was on my old system (Redhat 7.3). I think that may have caused some of the problems with Opera freaking out. I just upgraded to Mandrake 10.0 a few weeks ago, so hopefully that is all straightened out. But my uptime at home is usually VERY long. Not to start comparing, but it usually gets rebooted only when the power goes out or something. In fact, my web server has been up since the last power hit, 118 days ago. Before that, it was up over 230. :-)
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:5, Interesting)
But in an enviroment filled with Google Bar, Webshots, Gator, Weatherbug and other crap, not including the pure spywear and viruses, the PCs will fail. It has nothing to do with the OS, but everything to do with stupid users, and a lazy and ineffective IT department.
Re:My take... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll have to agree there actually. Most recently even when a program has managed to lock X up, it still respects Ctrl-Alt-F1, from which I can kill the offedning program(s) and X bounces back happily. I guess this is the equivalent of Ctrl-Alt-Delete and using the Task Manager in Windows. The Linux method (while less user friendly) has the advantage that you drop right out of X, and hence have full control of your machine again. Trying to haul up the task manager when the GUI is locking can be rather difficult sometimes.
Jedidiah.
Re:The Windows users are eating plenty of poultry (Score:5, Interesting)
The statement of not blaming Microsoft for the instability brought about by bad/outdated drivers is horse puckey and a REALLY bad excuse. If the software is failing then IT, and it alone, should fail and be disconnected/ignored by the OS. With Microsoft a bad font can (and will) bring down the ENTIRE house of cards. So yes, I very much place blame squarely on Microsoft's shoulders and due to their inabilities Win2K was the _last_ release that I'm forced to still support.
In the trial days (releasing "other" OS' out to the remote user base) it became very obvious very quickly what was going to happen to the help desk (nearly gone
Bottom line: we're now spending less on licensing, less in support costs, and less in user counter-productivity...which does mean we've had more $$$ to hire a few more people (yeah, that much in savings) to work on what we do in our business.
With Windows you'll find yourself constantly fighting or babying the computer -- with the Un*x's the computer just works for you.
How Many Of These Were Avoidable? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:1, Interesting)
Not if you live by a aluminium smelter (power issues)
Outlook, worms, virus's and malware/spyware have decreased reliability. Also employee 'monitoring' software tends to explode or corrupt profiles. In one case, the help desk, and the image testing team, were not told security were sneaking in a extra payload - yep, the sneakware did ruin things.
Secondly, when XP mucks up it is pretty good about logging it.
If failure rates are 8%, the administrators must be incompetent. Root cause investigation should bring this number way down. Maybe management wants it this way.
Perhaps the French are smarter, and claim they have to reboot while they get a coffee and a croisant.
Maybe their help desk is trained to to say 'reboot' so they have time to check their fixit scripts, and have time to fake an extra troubleticket to get the numbers up.
The social aspect is interesting: people resent reliable productive platforms, as it gives them fewer means to goof off, or semi plausable reasons for missing a deadline.
Re:Biased (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:5, Interesting)
As to the crashing, my XP laptop and Win2K home machines need about a reboot a week on average. My linux boxes and my Win2K "server" (client build) which sees little to no console activity, run for weeks and up without reboots, and all the reboots I've neede to do were because of me.
This leads me to believe that the bulk of Windows is fine and that explorer and the other UI programs are the source of most problems (sans spyware).
-nB
Re:Biased (Score:3, Interesting)
Right...
So you would happily take a job if the description was just "Teach a bunch of 50 old ladied to use Linux"?
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember a statistic in a Bill Bryson book saying that 2% of the US's yearly electricity use is from workstations left on over night.
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:3, Interesting)
Very obviously, a post from *one* slashdotter along with your opinion is enough to generalize windows users against linux users. I am just sick of the "windows can't get the same uptime as linux". This is bullshit and everyone knows it, or you are just an ignorant of the Windows thing, so please stop talking about it.
I had a Win2k server in my garage during the last 3 years. It has rebooted 4 times: 3 power outages, one hardware change.
Period. Installed and running during that time:
. Lots of P2P
. Webserver
. Mail server
. CVSnt
. NetTime
. DynDns update service
. Lots of MPEG-2 encoding for overnight encoding (can't sleep with my PC on)
. I probably miss a few
So please, stop trolling next time.
Mod parent way up Up UP! (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been saying this for YEARS!
A Windows user will say "uptime" and mean "time since I had a blue screen" but will NOT count the daily / weekly / whatever reboots they perform.
If Windows starts to go sluggish, they reboot. But they do NOT consider that a break in their "uptime" NOR do they consider that a crash.
# uptime
08:34:13 up 115 days, 18:12, 1 user, load average: 0.10, 0.04, 0.01
That's because I had to move it a few months ago. Everything is current except the latest kernel.
Now I just KNOW I'll see posts from Windows users talking about their "uptime" and so on. But too many of the Windows patches require reboots. Here are the scenarios:
#1. Unpatched Windows box with high uptime.
#2. Patched Windows box with low uptime.
#3. User who does not understand uptime.
what time span? (Score:3, Interesting)
my Windows 2k box at work has been running since (thinks about when the last power outage was) May... so am I to be expecting it to be out of commision now for 15 days really soon?
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:3, Interesting)
I sure hope this wasn't on any kind of a network. Last year, Microsoft had 60 (yes, SIXTY) security patches released. That's more than one per week. And yes, each one requires a reboot of the server. Sounds like you and your 180 days are a sitting duck for hackers.
I've got an OpenVMS cluster that hasnt been rebooted since 1999 and an IBM AIX box that's been up since 2001. They just work. Fact is, Microsoft does not have an enterprise-class operating system when every security patch requires a reboot, every device driver install requires a reboot, and every application install requires not only a reboot, but that you close all other running applications during the install. That's just not enterprise level. For these reasons, anyone who uses a Windows server for any sort of 24/7 mission critical application, is just an old-fashioned idiot.
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course the only time I've seen Linux crash was when I had motherboard components failing, and my Mac only locks up about once a year (and almost never gets shut down or rebooted - logging out and back in always seems to be sufficient to fix it when it gets wierd.)
But I have to agree with another posters suggestion - I think that the instability in Windows is primarily from IE, and all the other little things that tie into it. Without that, even Win98 can be reasonably stable (meaning at least as stable as XP, which most people seem to consider 'stable enough' for a desktop or game machine - not stable enough for critical server tasks of course.)
Re:The Windows users are eating plenty of poultry (Score:1, Interesting)
Once one of my Windows mahcines is setup (Which takes about 1/10 the time it takes our Linux experts to fully setup a linux box) the Windows machines require virtually zero maintenence beyond windows update. The same procedure on the Linux boxes takes hours out of every week to keep current.
Windows 2k and XP "Just Work" in a way that no Linux zealot could ever believe an OS can work. (Linux surely doesn't!)
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:3, Interesting)
Oddly, once it has blocked a popup from a site for the first time, it seems to continue blocking it even when the toolbar is hidden. This is what gave me the impression that it was just inconsistant.
Like a lot of bugs, it's not really the app, it's not the computer, I'm just not using it like the developer expected.
That's strange (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:2, Interesting)
True unless the program is not segregated from the OS memory footprint (like a driver, or a debugger that allows poking all memory locations). These programs generally require administrator priveledges to install (and setuid patented equivalent to run). Unfortunately, 90% of programs on windows require admin install, and for no good reason. They spew dll's in system directories instead of application local directories, write to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE instead of HKEY_CURRENT_USER, or simply use restricted API functions instead of less capable alternatives.
I'm not absolving Microsoft of all of their sins, but most crashes are caused because most windows applications do not follow the microsoft guidelines, and users still install unsafe programs. As an analogy: if all Linux software required kernel.h and required setuid to run, it too could take down your linux box if it crashed. However, most linux programs do not require such priveledges, and if one does, the user generally tries to find an alternative program. So some of the blame should be shouldered by the developers of the applications and the users who install them.
Of course, on the flip side, any linux development guide will tell you that you do *not* put kernel.h in userland programs. Microsoft makes it very developer friendly to do the equivalent (by providing better documentation on all of the naughty stuff I stated above). Well, they've changed on that recently, but they can't erase all of the old articles and books that teach the bad form.
Re:Perhaps is the user base of those versions? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Sounds like a buncha FUD to me. (Score:2, Interesting)
And this makes Windows a piece of crap?
There isn't an OS that can handle all of that. I can write crappy software that will cause problems on almost anything. Worms? They are availiable for just about any (if not all) OS there is. Bad user habits? How can an OS do anything about that? If I want to run as root, is that RedHat's fault? Spyware, keyloggers, network sniffers and all of that is just the user running programs. The OS (ESPECIALLY MICROSOFT) had better NOT tell me what programs I can run on my machine! I want to download and install 6 copies of Gater it had better let me. And it's not the OS's fault if I do. It's not the OS's fault if I do it and don't know what I am doing.
There are many reasons an OS might be a piece of crap. Hard to code for, missing functionality, OS itself have access violations, hard to use, and on and on.
But the reasons you gave just prove the OS is popular, not a piece of crap.