Filed under: OS Updates, Windows, Microsoft
Showstopper chkdsk bug set to derail Windows 7 launch? Hardly.
by Lee Mathews Aug 5th 2009
The bug happens when running chkdsk - which becomes RAM-hungry under certain specific circumstances, gets all crazy-like, then causes a BSOD (which I argue is more like a feature of Windows than a bug). Chris123NT posted the news yesterday on his blog, but it took a few hours for the sensationalism to begin. A post at InfoWorld said the bug "risks derailing the Windows 7 product launch."
Oh, crap! We're all in trouble! Or are we?
As it turns out, the only way this really qualifies as a "showstopper" is by virtue of the fact that Ed Bott had to stop what he was doing to show people why it's not. Here's a brief summary:
- The bug only occurs when running chkdsk /R on a non-system drive. The /R? That's to recover data from damaged sectors and relocate it.
- That being the case, single-drive, single partition systems (like 90% of those I repair on a daily basis) are immune to the bug.
- To pull off the chkdsk /r you first have to run an elevated command prompt (which most users won't know how to do), then ignore the warning about the drive being locked, then allow the entire check to complete.
- The InfoWorld post admits that the author "did not succeed in causing the systems to "blue screen" as others have reported." System did slow to a crawl due to lack of available RAM, but there was no Earth-shattering kaboom.
- Reports of this happening when a removable drive is inserted have been greatly exaggerated. When Windows asks if you want to scan and fix? Nothing bad happens.
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
