In my opinion, besides
all the user-oriented features of an operating system, stability is
the most important issue. After all, an OS can look really good, but
if it crashes a lot, what’s the point?
I found Win2000 to be
quite stable, more so than Windows 98. During my testing, I had
several programs open and active at once, and the OS didn’t flinch.
To back this up, an associate of mine has been using Win2000 and it’s
various Beta and Release Candidate
versions for almost a year or so now. He leaves his computer on 24 hours a day, performing many
tasks at once. He can’t say enough how stable it has been for him.
Win2000 has some new
code that stops system instabilities before they occur. Some of this
code is aimed to stop problems occurring from buggy drivers. First,
Microsoft seems to have made an effort to eliminate the need to
reboot the system after installing some drivers, and changing
network settings, such as IP address, and such. The OS also offers
kernel-mode write protection which lets the system mark memory pages
as used, preventing other processes from overwriting. This will
prevent kernel level software such as drivers from trying to write
to memory that’s already in use, causing a crash.
In addition, there is
also a new driver verification system that will help prevent buggy
drivers. It exposes errors in drivers and shelters the OS from them.
This preventative barrier isn’t the solution to end all, but it
helps. And it degrades performance overall. Microsoft is trying a
new system. Their Windows Hardware Quality Lab also provides
additional protection against beta or third party drivers. Drivers
that are certified by the Quality Lab will get a digital signature.
This signature is automatically detected by Windows 2000. If the OS
doesn’t detect this signature, it will inform you of this and allow
you the choice to continue or not.
Win2000 has other
defenses that guard against more than just drivers. The Windows
Installer Service is one of them. It is designed to install
applications safely. It installs, repairs (copy key files from CD if
necessary), un-installs, updates, etc. It also keeps track of
dependent components that are shared amongst multiple applications,
such as spell checkers. This is a great idea, and helps to keep all
your apps running flawlessly. The drawback? The application has to
be designed to use this new service.
Ending an application
gone awry is easier too. In Windows 9x, you could end one process at
a time by hitting Crtl-Alt-Del, choosing the offending task, and
hitting End Task. In Win2000, you go through the same steps, but
when you end an app, Windows also ends every other process that was
started by the offending application. This means fewer problems get
left in memory after you end the task, and this requires fewer
reboots. If you do have major problems, you can always boot into
Safe Mode.
Windows 2000 is also set
up to bring an end to "DLL Hell". Many of us have had this
problem. We install a program and it overwrites important system
files with a "newer" version that is required to run the
program. In actual fact, though, some programs overwrite DLL files
with older versions, causing problems. This can cause other programs
to become unstable, etc. Win2000 introduces System file Protection.
With this, Windows allows the installing program to install its own
system files into its own directory. It also allows it to overwrite
the same files in the Windows directory. But, Win2000 then goes back
and replaces these "new" files with the original version.
This ensures OS stability. What about those programs that actually
need a new DLL? Well, the Win2000 development team has committed to
issuing updates to DLL’s. We’ll see.
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