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Comment by AnHonestComment | Hacker News Reader

I had Windows hard crash using Google Chrome on Hulu.

I had Windows reset itself in the middle of a long-running calculation overnight, because obviously 100% CPU usage and programs that refuse to quit is a signal it’s safe to power cycle the computer.

I routinely have to fight my devices to do what I say, because they re-interpreted valid words into other ones.

I think modern tech reliability is as overstated as historic rosiness — this turd is polished, but it’s not more functional.

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Windows is absolutely more stable now than it was in the 90s. Not even comparable.

Hmm Windows NT was a rock.

My fav OS was Win2k ... Ahhh memories

There's a reason that XP and subsequent client versions were based on NT :)

It was not used by most people back in the 90s...

Agreed, I used Windows throughout the 90’s. I remember running one of the early web servers on my pc and was used to rebooting daily to avoid an unresponsive server.

But Windows NT was much more stable as a server.

I think what also added to it was NTs responsiveness. Today there are so many housekeeping jobs that might take your CPU that you never know how long e.g. opening settings will take. Clicking anything in explorer on a good Pentium 3 running NT4 always had the same satisfying latency, almost like an RTOS.

Windows was more stable 10 years ago than it was in the 90s. I wouldn't be surprised if it's less stable now than it was in the 90s.

Have you ever used Windows 95?

Yes.

It's "more stable" but is it "more reliable"? Not when it decides it's going to reboot in the middle of a long-running job even when I've told it not to. The inability to disable windows from updating itself is one of the most terrible decisions they ever made.

I don't even understand your comment. Yes, definitely more reliable than crashing randomly when doing about anything for no reason with BSOD, like when plugging peripherals or when one piece of software made the whole OS crash.

It doesn't matter. If I'm running a job overnight, I'm not plugging or unplugging any peripherals or starting or stopping any other tasks. My sole expectation is that the system will run my job to completion. Not to rudely interrupt it to restart the system to install updates which it has decided are of a higher priority than the sole reason I am running the system.

Another situation is that I'm running virtual machines on a Windows 10 host. I want those machines to be available continuously, and I want any system reboots to be planned and manually executed. Windows 10 has taken that control away.

Windows 10 restarting itself on its own whims is a regular occurrence. It's completely and utterly unacceptable. Even if you change all the settings to prevent it, it still occurs.

You can pause updates in Settings, and totally disable them in the registry I believe.

Yes, you can try, and it does respect it to a degree. But not all the time. And it likes to reset the settings following updates. There isn't a single and unambiguous knob to set which will guarantee it will never ever happen. Even for "emergency" security updates.

I'd much prefer the MacOS or Linux approach which is to notify you but still requires you to action it. Nag me all you like. But always leave the "reboot" step under my control to explicitly sanction. Then I can ensure it happens at my convenience and that it doesn't interrupt any business-critical work in process.

What version of Windows? 10 definitely seems less stable and slower than 7. I haven't had any BSODs with 7, which is amazing looking back now (with 10 having unrecoverable blue screens, damn).

Latest Windows 10 and Google Chrome have a periodic freeze watching Hulu, which requires a hard reset. None of that is uncommon tech.

I suspect some kind of DRM or video codec is freezing the whole machine when it crashes.

Windows 7 was great.

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