[Rant] Windows broke itself (and KPed my Mac)

[apfhex]

Actually surprisingly, Win XP had been working solidly on my Mac Pro since installing it some months ago. Today I booted into it, thinking maybe I'l play me some Total Annihilation, which had previously been running flawlessly. Oops, what's this? It suddenly doesn't work? I'm presented with a black screen with some strange white blocks scattered across it. Pressing Return exits back to Windows. Huh.

I then tried to run the Photoshop CS3 beta, and I know it's a /beta/ but, it also didn't work (launched momentarily, and then exited without any errors).

Then I discovered there was some problem with the audio drivers, because iTunes was polite enough to tell me as much (the only error I ever got during this whole ordeal and it was actually useful). I tried to play some music and yeah, there was just silence. No sound in anything else either.

In retrospect the Total Annihilation error could have been related to the audio driver problem too, but I really can't tell. Anyway, not knowing where to start (feeling that it was more than just a driver issue) I just wanted to go back to OS X. Only Windows froze while shutting down, so I had to force the power off. Then I powered on and before even the Apple logo appeared, it kernel panicked. The first time I've seen a KP on my Mac Pro aside from the issues with earlier builds of Parallels Desktop.

Well... after another power off/on... OS X appears to be working. Disk Utility told me the Volume Header needed minor repair, which I went ahead and repaired successfully (I don't know if that damage was already there or not). No other problems, but, I don't trust my install of Windows anymore, even if it's still fixable. Since I don't need it ATM, I might just wait until Vista is out (and maybe Apple updates Boot Camp to accommodate it) and go with that, or reinstall XP and make as few modifications and software installs as possible. Maybe then it would work with Parallels finally too!

So the point of this post... er... rant, is that I hate Windows because it randomly breaks. I'm a competent Windows user and I definitely didn't do anything to cause tonight's behavior (other than install the dang thing in the first place ).

 

[contoursvt]

You're ready to blame XP for something yet you booted into OSX and it told you there is some disc repair necessary? Even if its minor, still it shows that you may have had other hardware issue and what *IF* you had a couple bad sectors on the drive and it happend to be on the exact files that windows need to enable the sound.

I think you need to check the hardware the box is running on and make sure you've got no data corruption issues.

 

[apfhex]

Actually it was only on the HFS+ partition, and almost certainly unrelated (coincidentally I found the same error on my external HDD). I just mentioned it cause it was something I noticed at the same time.

Just for perspective: I boot Windows, all the software I try to run (not all apps, just the ones I wanted to use... Firefox was working fine) suddenly doesn't work or gives me an error, and even when I try to leave Windows it crashes and immediately after my Mac KPs. It was like 2 AM so I didn't want to bother with fixing Windows. That's why I love Mac OS X, I don't have to give myself headaches fixing weird random bugs all the time, just to get some work (or not work) done.

 

[contoursvt]

Just out of curiosity, are you using a hardware based firewall or do you plug straight into your modem? Running any antivirus on there on or? The only reason I'm wondering is that I've been running windows since NT4 says (prior to that I was running OS/2) and since NT4, Win2k and now XP, I have to say its very VERY solid so anything going wrong usually has an external factor such as viruses/trojans, bad or flaky hardware (event viewer will sometimes let you know) or data corruption due to bad SATA/IDE drivers. I literally have about 80 clients with machines going back to PIII 500 and Win2k as well as my work which has no less than about 150 PC's running 2K and XP on a 2K3 domain and no issues.

Since you're running XP on a Mac with some of the drivers being Apple supplied (and its not like they have had years of experience with windows drivers), I'd be leaning towards that. Are there updated IDE/SATA drivers that you have to install that are apple supplied or is it the default XP drivers that are loaded? Have the drivers passed Windows logo testing? I mean when you install the drivers, does a warning come up saying it has not passed testing..etc? Anyway I'd say check the event viewer under the system and application tabs and see if there is any clue as to what has happened.

Its easy to bash 2K and XP but the people that are running them and are experience will probably agree that its very reliable and that almost always, its external factors taking it down, not the OS itself.

 

[apfhex]

That's the thing, it was actually running solid with NO problems since I installed it back in September. Then all of a sudden boom. I hadn't just installed anything. It was working fine the last time I had used it.

As for drivers, I was using a slipstreamed SP2 disc with the Mac Pro SATA speed fix (no longer required since a later-released firmware update), and of course the Boot Camp 1.1.2 drivers. I may want to reinstall with a regular retail disc.

Of course it must have been an external factor of *some* sort, but nothing at all obvious and totally out of the blue.

Oh yeah and I've had the firewall and AVG running since day 1. I'm not behind a router.

 

[Xyl]

Then all of a sudden boom.

 

[ewinemiller]

running MacDrive?

Are you running MacDrive to read your OSX partition from Windows? I've had quite a few of these problems running MacDrive resulting in corruption of the OSX partition. I lost count of how many times I've reinstalled my laptop because of it.

I actually have a bug report into them from a few months back that will lock up Windows and usually corrupt the OSX partition. I can do it on demand, last response I got from the sounded like they can recreate it, but they haven't fixed it yet.

 

[apfhex]

Nope, no MacDrive.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

what format did you have you XP section of your drive in. if it was Fat 32 that might explain some of your problems because I do know that OSX will muck up that section and when xp starts using it it will muck of the files that OSX muck up leading to other problems.

That and fat32 has it own list of problems as well that can lead to critical file becoming corrupted.

 

[apfhex]

Ntfs.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

then I do not see how XP messed up your OSX part of your drive. It has no way of accessing or being able to read it. It seems more likely that it was something in OSX that caused those issues that or something apple screwed up. That be either OSX or boot camp. I just do not see the source of your problem lying in XP. Because you said your self that something was damage in the OSX part of the drive showing that something did happen there which leads me to believe that it did something to the xp part as well.

 

[apfhex]

You're missing the point. I'm not talking about drive damage here. I shouldn't have even mentioned it in my OP.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

But you are missing my point. Based on what you said it seems very likely that the issues of the crashing was NOT caused by XP. Based on the drive damage/issues that could easily be the source of the problem. Just a lot of people choose to blame M$ for anything with out looking at other causes of the same problem. In your cause it was something hardware or apple software related not XP related. The apple software being the OS or boot camp and the hardware issue caused that part of muck up.

 

[apfhex]

I got your point well and fine, but if you had seen this behavior, you'd probably agree it was a software issue, and restricted to the NTFS partition. OS X doesn't have anything to do with it, certainly, and I would be quick to dismiss the Boot Camp drivers as they've been working fine for months.

The KP, I can't say what caused it, but it may have been related to the forced shutdown (though I had to do a lot of those when installing Windows in the first place due to the blank screen errors that plagued the X1900XT+ACD before the firmware update, and never had a KP during that time).

 

[Sesshi]

Regular Windows doesn't break in that way. It's one of the reasons I got a separate proper Windows machine as an adjunct to the Mac Pro* - be it Boot Camp or Parallels, the Mac is NOT a 100% real Windows machine.


* actually, I've moved it elsewhere as I don't use a Mac for anything beyond general 'doing stuff' for which I don't need that power. The power stuff I leave to XP & Vista.

 

[contoursvt]

But you are missing my point. Based on what you said it seems very likely that the issues of the crashing was NOT caused by XP. Based on the drive damage/issues that could easily be the source of the problem. Just a lot of people choose to blame M$ for anything with out looking at other causes of the same problem. In your cause it was something hardware or apple software related not XP related. The apple software being the OS or boot camp and the hardware issue caused that part of muck up.

hehe. Glad someone pretty much concurred what I said so I know its not just me liking my XP more than most here.

 

[New Mac User]

Just out of curiosity, are you using a hardware based firewall or do you plug straight into your modem? Running any antivirus on there on or? The only reason I'm wondering is that I've been running windows since NT4 says (prior to that I was running OS/2) and since NT4, Win2k and now XP, I have to say its very VERY solid so anything going wrong usually has an external factor such as viruses/trojans, bad or flaky hardware (event viewer will sometimes let you know) or data corruption due to bad SATA/IDE drivers. I literally have about 80 clients with machines going back to PIII 500 and Win2k as well as my work which has no less than about 150 PC's running 2K and XP on a 2K3 domain and no issues.

Since you're running XP on a Mac with some of the drivers being Apple supplied (and its not like they have had years of experience with windows drivers), I'd be leaning towards that. Are there updated IDE/SATA drivers that you have to install that are apple supplied or is it the default XP drivers that are loaded? Have the drivers passed Windows logo testing? I mean when you install the drivers, does a warning come up saying it has not passed testing..etc? Anyway I'd say check the event viewer under the system and application tabs and see if there is any clue as to what has happened.

Its easy to bash 2K and XP but the people that are running them and are experience will probably agree that its very reliable and that almost always, its external factors taking it down, not the OS itself.

But you are missing my point. Based on what you said it seems very likely that the issues of the crashing was NOT caused by XP. Based on the drive damage/issues that could easily be the source of the problem. Just a lot of people choose to blame M$ for anything with out looking at other causes of the same problem. In your cause it was something hardware or apple software related not XP related. The apple software being the OS or boot camp and the hardware issue caused that part of muck up.

Regular Windows doesn't break in that way. It's one of the reasons I got a separate proper Windows machine as an adjunct to the Mac Pro* - be it Boot Camp or Parallels, the Mac is NOT a 100% real Windows machine.


* actually, I've moved it elsewhere as I don't use a Mac for anything beyond general 'doing stuff' for which I don't need that power. The power stuff I leave to XP & Vista.

Thank you!

It astounds me that people would bash Windows because it might not always work properly on a system that it is not designed to work on.

Windows XP is VERY stable on a proper IBM clone. My XP Pro file server has been running straight for months, for example. I manage it with Windows Remote Desktop Connection.

 

[apfhex]

It astounds me that people would bash Windows because it might not always work properly on a system that it is not designed to work on.

Windows XP is VERY stable on a proper IBM clone.

So how would it be any different running it on some other quad-core Xeon system? There are proper drivers for everything (and only a few of them are written by Apple).

XP was VERY stable on it until Saturday. Never a blue screen. Never a stutter. I can claim it worked better that it ever has on any of my friends PCs (honestly!)! I didn't even experience any of the common bugs like files that wouldn't delete because they were "in use", even if the computer had JUST been booted.

Logically, software doesn't just "break" without some interference. I don't know what happened yet (as I haven't had the time to investigate further), and I never can /fully/ dismiss a HDD because I know how quickly they can go bad. However there is absolutely zero indication so far that it's related to hardware, which you guys are all making the issue about.

FYI if anyone can suggest the best (free?) way to check for NTFS partition errors, so I can rule that out, I'm all ears. Does XP come with something decent?

 

[New Mac User]

You can try doing a disk scan from Windows. From My Computer, right-click on the C: drive and select Properties. When the Properties window loads, select the Tools tab. Click the Check Now button to begin the disk check utility. Click both optins for a thourough scan. Windows should tell you it needs to reboot, it will run the disk scan utility in a low-level mode before it loads the GUI.

If you don't want to use the built-in solution, download some demo disk utility software to do a check.

At some level, the Mac has to emulate a PC hardware environment for Windows to run properly. Macs don't just magically run Windows now because they have Intel processors. If any of the virtual hardware does something Windows doesn't expect, it can go down. Hopefully it was just a fluke for you and it never happens again. But you haven't tried it again, right?