[Arryn]

Originally posted by alexti:
Well, Visual Studio from the same MS does it just fine. Just try take a breath while debugging some system wide hook. That nasty breakpoint-in-template multiplying bug in VC is also quite efficient. While OS can survive one or 2 deaths of VC, after a dozen or so it apparently runs out of its lives.

Generally, while NT/2000/XP are somewhat more stable (than DOS/Win95+), my development computer can rarely survive for more a week without a reboot. Even without working with system hooks or drivers (not that I actually work on drivers).

The culprit is that M$, in their infinite (lack of) wisdom, never coded the OS (any of them) to make proper use of the Intel multi-ringed processor security architecture. The Windows OS kernel is not fully isolated from the rest of the OS, running in Ring 0 as it should. Windows' kernel and low-level device drivers are intermeshed and both run at the same processor priority/security ring (unlike linux). XP is better than 9x in that at least the apps themselves (not the device .dlls the apps may call) run in a different ring and thus are insulated from the rest of the OS. But even in XP, apps that have bad drivers can take the OS with them since the driver code runs alongside the kernel code.

MSVS interfaces with the OS at low levels, especially the debugger (something MS tells devs not to do with their own code, but MS is big on breaking their own "rules"), and thus can readily corrupt the kernel code. I've never crashed XP using VS, but I don't work on drivers either. I was too hasty in saying that I didn't know of any apps that crashed XP Pro, since I'd forgotten that VS has the capability to do so when used certain ways. Thanks for the reminder. (OTOH, in my defense, when I mentioned apps, I was thinking of end-user apps such as games and "productivity" apps.)