What happens during a crash

[Dan Mitchell]

This is probably a ridiculously open ended question, but what exactly are the events which cause system lockup & crashes in a pc (other than the overarching factor of an appalling bad OS design)? Since switching to a new ME based machine I have had MANY more lockups & crashes, have been able to reduce the number somewhat by significantly trimming the number of superfluous-crap programs which had been running in the background, but they still occur more often than I would like. A typical error message (when one even appears, as opposed to when things just freeze until I ctrl/alt/delete the offending program) will be "Program x has had an error and will shut down now". Gee, thanks for consulting *ME* about the matter... What is likely to have taken place? ***WHY*** can't the damned thing just resume operations? Has it "lost its place" in the program code?

Dan

[Paleo Pete]

I'm pretty sure most crashes are memory related. I doubt if I can offer a definitive explanation, but I may be able to get close.

A program needs memory to run, and sends a request to the CPU for memory addressing space. The CPU checks and says OK, go her, and routes it to a certain memory range. All's well in Wonderland...

Sometimes though, the program that had that address a few minutes ago hasn't released that memory, or the new program asks for specific memory space that's already in use, and we have a problem. The proverbial blue screen pops up and says "Hey, your computer just did something really nasty", and try as you may, unless you're running NT or win 2000 about all you can do is reboot to clear up the mess. With NT or 2000 you can often slowly bring the machine back to life, but with 95 or 98 usually it means reboot to clear memory.

In some cases it can also be caused by faulty memory. Even though memory is supposedly tested during boot by BIOS and himem, neither is fool-proof, and usable physical memory with a bad chip somewhere can go undetected, a program asks for memory space that includes that chip, the proram can't function with memory that does not work, your machine locks up or greets you with a BSOD and you are reduced to a quivering mass of protoplasm calling for mommy...

Sometimes it's also just from too much going on all at one time, you have 9 TSR applications running in the background, a word processor, an image editor, a CD or MP3 playing and 7 browser windows open and the computer finally decides it's been tortured enough and refuses to cooperate.

All this and ME too...ain't life grand...

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[kayofcircles]

Thanks, Pete..I have often wondered about that too.

"quivering mass of protoplasm calling for mommy..." I have been there, only I want my daddy to come look at this silly ornery thing.

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Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Teach a man to fish and he will eat for the rest of his life.
-- Chinese proverb

[sea69]

nice post Pete

especially liked the disclaimer.. hehe

http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif

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