XP SP3 Crashes Some AMD Machines

Stony Stevenson alerts us to new information on the XP SP3-induced crashes that we discussed a few days back. Jesper Johansson, a former program manager for security policy at Microsoft, is maintaining an ongoing log and support site for users affected by any of several problems triggered by XP3. Machines using AMD hardware, particularly HP desktops, seem to have several modes of failure; others affect Intel machines.

Hey, wait a minute!

[M1rth]

Headline singles out AMD machines, body indicates that AMD and Intel are equally affected by various modes of crash. Sounds like someone's trying to drum down AMD stock or something... nah, we'd never have a processor partisan writing for Slash would we?

Re:Ulterior motive

[wizardforce]

yeah, not so much upgrade to Vista as try to keep those on XP from fleeing Windows like rats on a sinking ship.

Re:Typical Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

typical slashdot; post anything about ms that crashes but i still don't see where slashdot covered how feisty fawn fucked hp tablet owners even though there are several sites that cover the issue. i guess linux failures just aren't newsworthy?

Re:Ulterior motive

[CSMatt]

Seems like these crashes would be doing the opposite.

Re:Rename the topic to say INTEL drivers on AMD sy

[Dencrypt]

It's all in the eye of the beholder. To me, the topic says: "M$ can't make software for other architectures than intel." or; "M$ can't make software. Period." Hopefully people read a lot more than just topics though.

Re:Wintel Conspiracy

[Joe The Dragon]

more like intel payed HP to put there drivers on to all systems in way that MS says they do not support. HP needs to step up and pay for peoples down time and the cost of having a tech come out and fix it. This may even need to come down to a class action law suit.

make the head line say HP systems useing a unsupported by MS driver setup / image load crash under SP3.

Re:Ulterior motive

[wizardforce]

my point was that SP3 was supposed to try to retain current windows users in the face of vista's failure to impress. SP3 instead seems to be driving people away at least until/if it gets fixed.

misleading headline

[timmarhy]

wow what a porker. sp3 crashes AMD based systems, then when you read on it's intel drivers installed on AMD systems that causes the problems.

not exactly a cut and dry SP3 problem and certainly not an AMD or INTEL issue at all.

people who write this crap need to all be thrown in a cage and be made to rip each other apart.

Re:Rename the topic to say INTEL drivers on AMD sy

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah because it's definitively Microsoft's fault that HP is packing Intel drivers on their AMD machines. Typical baseless Microsoft Hatred.

Re:Alpha

[Anonymous Coward]

NT4 ran on Alpha, PowerPC, and SPARC, among others, but it wasn't written by their in-house staff. They hired some away from DEC to write it for them.

Re:Only one crash

[i.of.the.storm]

Similarly, these anecdotes about SP3 crashing computers have totally changed my mind about the reliability of SP3. It works both ways...

Re:Typical Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why I always wait at least a few months to apply a new service pack. I don't feel like being Microsoft's beta tester. ;)

Re:Blue screen after first reboot...

[biobogonics]

I got hit by this bug when the patch went live last week on Windowsupdate. As the article states, the solution in was to disable intelppm.sys from safemode. It's a lot quicker if you do it using autoruns. It's too bad this article wasn't posted last week. It would have saved me a lot of trouble shooting time.

This bit me today as I manually went though Windows Update on one of my office's machines, an older Compaq Presario with an AMD processor. Not knowing about the simple 1 line of instructions that would disable the intelppm.sys driver, I went through multiple re-boots and finally backwards using system restore. Finally downloaded 300+ MB of the XPSP3 installer (I have several other machines to update as well) and ran it after applying the patch. No real trouble after that.

I can't really blame MS for this. I can't blame HP that much either. The machine was near the bottom of the Compaq/HP line. It was purchased to allow our (former) receptionist to perform her duties and little more.

There is only one problem with this theory

[zappepcs]

Quite simply, if MS wanted to keep customers they would create a product with zero problems (or as close as they can get) and push it out at a VERY competitive price. That is how the marketplace is supposed to work. When your namebrand is trashed, you have to compete extra hard. MS seems unwilling to do this, or at least has failed to show that they are trying to do so.

That might just be bad business decisions on their part, but whether it was malicious or stupidity does not matter. In either case the end result is that MS loses more customers. Nobody wanted to hear that MS was losing or soon to be dead a year ago when predictions were rife, but here it is, in your face. MS is consistently failing to either impress or produce quality product. The dragon^H^H^H^H^Hcathedral is near death... is it time for the penny market to celebrate?

Not on your life, it will be time to celebrate when the dried bones of the dragon are used up as party favors. Until then, it is time to keep competing aggressively, and nothing short of that will do. Competition, not patents, drives innovation. Innovation will bring us secure computing at home. A kind of secure that behaves friendly to the end user.

Now, am I bashing MS for pleasure? No, it is because MS products are in their deathbed and nothing short of a complete restart will get them out of it. It does not appear that MS will do that. There is nothing in current or near future activity that shows MS will do anything different from what got them in the death bed to start with. The beast is dieing. There is nothing more to say.

Call that a troll if you will, but the truth hurts sometimes. Do I want it to die? NO! Emphatically NO!!!! Without competition, quality dies. Would I like to see MS slide into a comfortable second place? Yes.... and the reasons are simple, just ask any Linux fanboi for them.

SP3 failed utterly in the face of the current market that MS faces. There is NO excuse for that in business. If you believe the art of war extends to business, MS deserves to be beheaded ungracefully. That is how business goes, so don't bother telling me that I'm a troll.

Re:There is only one problem with this theory

[kestasjk]

No, it is because MS products are in their deathbed and nothing short of a complete restart will get them out of it.

SP3 has worked fine here.. Hardly noticed a difference (the security policy explanations were nice though), and XP has been great in general.

If they were writing for a limited set of machines I'm sure XP and Vista wouldn't face these hardware specific problems, but they're writing for use by as many people as possible, with as few problems as possible, and pushing it out at a competitive price.

That is how the marketplace is supposed to work, and it looks like it's working fine for MS (fanatic /. stories aside. "some HP tablet users are reporting problems! this is the death of Microsoft!")

Re:There is only one problem with this theory

[zappepcs]

I'm guessing that you missed the news that if you are top dog, you can't afford to mess up?

It was not JUST tablet users. Read some news would you! IE8 beta users were screwed too. MS has had decades at working with EVERY kind of hardware. It's fscking lame to call that bluff now. F/OSS software might be able to still do that, but MS has NO excuse. period. for any reason. They have been working with this hardware FOR_EVER! I don't know how to say that strongly enough. Fuck! The hardware has been designed around the GD software. There is NO excuse. Business is business. Get it right or fail... this look like one more fail in the bag of fail that MS is filling up fairly fast. From a pure business pundit prospective, MS failed here. Keep drinking the coolaid!

Re:There is only one problem with this theory

[GigaplexNZ]

Quite simply, if MS wanted to keep customers they would create a product with zero problems (or as close as they can get) and push it out at a VERY competitive price.

That simple, huh?

Re:Rename the topic to say INTEL drivers on AMD sy

[IntlHarvester]

HP should NOT be using the same image for their Intel and AMD-based systems.

Why not? Shouldn't Windows be flexible enough to use a single system image for commonly available hardware?

First, this configuration obviously worked fine for SP2. Second, Microsoft controls the driver certification process, so they should be able to ensure that Intel drivers aren't loading on an AMD system. This is a pretty minor fuckup, but it's firmly in MS's lap.

Re:Rename the topic to say INTEL drivers on AMD sy

[Eukariote]

This story making the rounds with unwarranted AMD-user-scaring headlines is typical of the kind of FUD that Intel shills have been spreading. There is a gaggle of them here on slashdot and most other blogs and boards of any reach. Most review sites with any impact have been bought and paid for.

Re:Rename the topic to say INTEL drivers on AMD sy

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, lord knows that when I installed the Intel version of Linux onto my AMD computer all hell broke loose and I had to reinstall from scratch with the AMD version.

Oh, wait. Linux isn't written by retards, and is capable of loading the proper drivers for the system on boot. It can even enable processor-specific workarounds on boot-up if needed.

Windows is fragile enough that upgrading the BIOS can force you to reinstall from scratch. This is a Microsoft problem, no matter how they spin it. After all, it worked prior to SP3 - it should work with SP3.

Re:Rename the topic to say INTEL drivers on AMD sy

[IntlHarvester]

I guess I don't understand your POV. Just because you had to sit on it for work doesn't mean that's the right way to proceed. All these things have vendor strings and PCI IDs, Windows should be smart enough to ignore irrelevant drivers. Linux boots on all this stuff with a single kernel after all.

Re:There is only one problem with this theory

[CSMatt]

And just how many business users are using IE8?

Hopefully none. A smart business knows better than to run beta software for their mission-critical tasks.

A smart business would also know never to upgrade their systems the very moment an upgrade to a piece of software comes out. It's much smarter to wait a few weeks for the developers to figure out the problems that slipped by unnoticed during the beta stages due to fewer users. This is true for both free software and proprietary software. I remember having some nasty problems when I upgraded to the last two Ubuntu releases the day they came out. Now I'm waiting for Hardy to "stabilize" because I now know not to run software that's just been released. It's true that what we are talking about is just a service pack, but based on what happened when SP2 came out the public really should have expected Microsoft's future service packs to do just as much under-the-hood tinkering as SP2 did.

Yes, it is partially Microsoft's fault for not warning users on Automatic Updates that SP3 is still brand new and could potentially cause problems, but unless you never had problems with SP2 or were not in charge of a Windows XP machine during that time, this should have been seen from a mile away.

Re:Rename the topic to say INTEL drivers on AMD sy

[jimicus]

HP should NOT be using the same image for their Intel and AMD-based systems.

In that case, I trust you'll forgive me asking this question:

What was the point in all the years spent by the PC industry on "Plug & Play", implementing ideas like unique IDs allocated by a manufacturer to their hardware devices and an operating system which can scan these IDs and choose drivers accordingly?

Re:There is only one problem with this theory

[AndGodSed]

OR

"Some Tablet users are complaining about Feisty Fawn! Linux Sux!"

Never mind that there has been TWO RELEASES of Ubuntu since then, with another on the way in six months.

Re:Typical Microsoft

[MagdJTK]

There's a large difference between moaning about the rubbish support for the product you paid a lot of money for and moaning that something someone put on the internet for free doesn't work.

Re:Rename the topic to say INTEL drivers on AMD sy

[jeffasselin]

It's certainly Microsoft's fault that their operating system can't figure out at boot-time which drivers are appropriate for the platform it's booting on and only loading those.

Mac OS X and Linux both do this. Why can't Windows?

Re:Stop code 0x0000007E is not a new problem

[jmauro]

Why would it be a conspiracy when being lazy explains it so much better.

Re:Typical Microsoft

[Sancho]

Linux is free. Windows users paid to have their machines screwed up.

Re:Typical Microsoft

[MightyMartian]

Why is it weird? It's not like the first time in history that a patch has caused problems for some but others, and it certainly isn't the first time for Microsoft.

There are only two problems with your theory

[celtic_hackr]

1) You are assuming there is an OS market to create a competitive price against, when in fact the business choices are M$, M$ and, well, M$ (unless you count those bit players: Unix, Linux, and Apple).

2) You are assuming and intelligent rational buyer's market, when there is only currently a seller's market (ie in the words of my infinitely wise toddler "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit").

The MS Spin machine will, and has already begun to, spin a new myth around SP3 to dazzle and disarm, and the fiasco will be averted yet again. While in the meantime, it becomes another brick in the crypt of MS among the more educated masses. I'll not argue that Windows is dieing a slow death, but we disagree with perhaps the timespan.