[Pwn]

I was just discovering the Vista reliability monitor, and it seems like a good idea. I like how it gives you a history of problems and errors for the last year and also gives you a reliability score. Does anybody know Microsoft's weighting scheme? I've looked at my monitor and there are ABSOLUTELY no Windows failures or hardware failures for the last year, only software (un)install entries, application failures (a good portion of these are explorer and iexplorer) and miscellaneous failures (only entries here are from power going out causing pc to shut down unexpectedly).

Of course, who's to say that the application failures (mostly applications locking up) aren't due to driver problems; and wouldn't that be considered a Windows error, even though the driver isn't provided by Microsoft? I mean, doesn't Microsoft work extensively with the hardware vendors to prevent this? And wouldn't microsoft have a way to tell by say a stop error or error code if a driver stopped working? I KNOW that my display driver has stopped working many times while playing games, it even pops up a message box stating so and that the driver will be re-started...so why doesn't the reliability monitor reflect that instead of blaming it on the application hanging up? And, wouldn't explorer and even iexplorer be considered a part of Windows? I mean, c'mon, what's Microsoft trying to prove with this, really? Passing the buck? Misplacing the blame?

Edit: Yeah, so I'm begging the question; I never claimed to be subjective. I would most likely be just as critical of Linux if I used that as much as I do Windows. Familiarity breeds contempt and all.

This post has been edited by Pwn: 19 March 2009 - 12:04 AM

[ccubed]

Pwn, on 18 Mar, 2009 - 10:43 PM, said:

I was just discovering the Vista reliability monitor, and it seems like a good idea. I like how it gives you a history of problems and errors for the last year and also gives you a reliability score. Does anybody know Microsoft's weighting scheme? I've looked at my monitor and there are ABSOLUTELY no Windows failures or hardware failures for the last year, only software (un)install entries, application failures (a good portion of these are explorer and iexplorer) and miscellaneous failures (only entries here are from power going out causing pc to shut down unexpectedly).

Of course, who's to say that the application failures (mostly applications locking up) aren't due to driver problems; and wouldn't that be considered a Windows error, even though the driver isn't provided by Microsoft? I mean, doesn't Microsoft work extensively with the hardware vendors to prevent this? And wouldn't microsoft have a way to tell by say a stop error or error code if a driver stopped working? I KNOW that my display driver has stopped working many times while playing games, it even pops up a message box stating so and that the driver will be re-started...so why doesn't the reliability monitor reflect that instead of blaming it on the application hanging up? And, wouldn't explorer and even iexplorer be considered a part of Windows? I mean, c'mon, what's Microsoft trying to prove with this, really? Passing the buck? Misplacing the blame?

Edit: Yeah, so I'm begging the question; I never claimed to be subjective. I would most likely be just as critical of Linux if I used that as much as I do Windows. Familiarity breeds contempt and all.

If the error is /in/ the application, why would it report your monitor? For that matter, why would it report your graphics card? The one thing about the Reliability monitor is that it reports the error in the current context only. So that if you're playing crysis and crysis is the reason your computer crashes, even if it was actually a graphics card problem, then crysis is listed. However, inside the data of that error report your graphics card is listed as the problem. So they know that it happened in the context of crysis and what at that time was going on with your graphics card.

Also, no. Microsoft is not responsible for driver problems unless they are microsoft drivers. They do not hold ATI or NVidia's hand and lead them through driver programming, that's up to the manufacturer of the hardware. It's that kind of thought process that leads people to blame /everything/ on windows when it's really a manufacturer problem. For example, the recent ATI dual monitor problem. That wasn't microsoft, it was ATI that messed something up.

Hope this answers your question.

[firebolt]

Vista's pretty reliable [in its own way].

I know --- not much help but.......

This post has been edited by firebolt: 02 April 2009 - 10:27 PM