One of the open secrets about windows is that in the 3.1 to 98 era, quite a large percentage of system crashes were actually caused by Creative Labs’ audio drivers. Those guys could not produce stable software if their lives depended on it.
But I don’t blame CL for Windows being crash prone. Microsoft made a choice and a compromise to get popular. A permissive driver model made them more popular with customers. If you pander, then the rewards and the consequences are both yours to enjoy.
MS tried to have their cake and eat it too back then. They wanted everyone to think they were the most sophisticated and powerful company because they were the smartest company in the world (which was the internal dialog at the time according to insiders I interviewed), but at the same time that it was all dumb luck and they couldn’t control anything.