Network World - Everything is perfect; you've upgraded to Windows 7. It's fully patched, all drivers are updated, security is tight, maybe you even have new hardware...yet the old Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) taunts you from your new high definition-screen.
The good news is that you can quickly solve the problem in most cases by using the Windows debugger tool. It's simple and free.
Back in the Window XP era (2005), we wrote a tutorial on solving Windows crashes (How to solve Windows system crashes in minutes). This is an updated version that will make you the master of system crash resolution in your home or office.
The same approach to resolve system crashes applies to the many variants of Windows, says Andre Vachon, principal development lead at Microsoft. "The latest releases of Microsoft Windows use the same operating system kernel, the same primary interfaces, drivers work on both server and client, and the debugger uses the same debug files. Further, we used the same code base and source tree to compile both 32- and 64-bit versions."
With that in mind and for simplicity I will refer to Windows 7. However, not only will the information apply to other current releases, much of it will apply to legacy versions back to Windows 2000.
Windows became more stable as it matured. And, while the operating system has gone from 16-bit to 32-bit and now 64-bit, the features have become more extravagant, and the footprint much larger - it is actually harder to bring down.
Still, it does fall over. However, the reasons for such system failures have not changed from the XP days.
Windows takes advantage of a protection mechanism that lets multiple applications run at the same time without stepping all over each other. Known now as User Mode and Kernel Mode, it was originally known as the Ring Protection scheme.
Kernel Mode (Ring 0) software has complete and unfettered access to the hardware. Software operating here is normally the most trusted because it can execute any instruction and reference any address in the system. Crashes in Kernel Mode are complete system failures requiring a reboot. This is where you find the operating system kernel code and most drivers.
User Mode (Ring 3) software cannot directly access the hardware or reference any address freely. It must pass instructions - perhaps more accurately requests - through calls to APIs. This feature enables protection for the overall operation of the system, regardless of whether an application makes an erroneous call or accesses an inappropriate address. Crashes in User Mode are generally recoverable, requiring a restart of the application but not the entire system. This is where you find most of the code running on your computer ranging from Word to Solitaire and some drivers.
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