Bug in Windows 7 RTM

DJG · 05 Aug 2009

Well, I tried the CHKDSK with repair (from Windows Properties) on one of my 100GB RAID 0 partitions. Soon it took up most of my 12GB of memory, but it didn't break anything and I could surf with my browser and such. AFAICT it's just using as much memory as it can. When it finished it reported no errors and mem usage went down to normal. Looks good to me.

Edit: I tried another run this time cancelling after it had started. It cancelled OK, and after a few seconds memory usage returned to normal. Again looks OK to me.

Muad Dib said:

P.S. Antman my Doctor won't even let me play with her stethoscope. And believe me I would like to check her heartbeat! :)

It's OK as long as she doesn't start playing with your stethoscope. And we know it's not really her heartbeat you want to check out ...

Antman · 05 Aug 2009

The members of SF have done an excellent job of scrutinizing this issue in detail. I can find no other example of such in-depth examination elsewhere, only arguments on whether or not it is a showstopper.

The executive and administrative staff of SF should take pride in work well done. Motivated personnel should post links to this thread on the other, less well-endowed, sites.

z3r010 · 05 Aug 2009

One post on the Windows SevenForum from a user named "Everlong18" said, It's not *that* much of a concern for me. It's not like I'm going to be running chkdsk on my D drive every day, but it would be nice if it got sorted."

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/080509-microsoft-win7-flaw.ht

Antman · 05 Aug 2009

I did find this, from some guy named Steven Sinofsky. Whoever that is ;-)

Oddly, I found it by Googling "explorer.exe failed to release the RAM when I canceled the disk check and grew even more despite the fact that the check was now aborted"

Crypto · 05 Aug 2009

A killer Windows 7 bug? Sorry, no by Ed Bott

The blogosphere is abuzz over a newly publicized bug in Windows 7. I read about it yesterday on Chris123NT’s blog, where it was described as a “critical bug in Windows 7 RTM.” The story picked up momentum today when InfoWorld’s Randall Kennedy (the man behind the “Save XP” Astroturf campaign) published a sensational polemic: “Critical Windows 7 bug risks derailing product launch.” Tom Warren at Neowin called it “rather nasty” but sensibly concluded that it’s far from a “show stopper.”
My conclusion? It’s alarming behavior if you’re unaware of what’s happening. But when you look more carefully, it’s arguably a feature, not a bug, and the likelihood that you’ll ever crash a system this way is very, very small and completely avoidable.

matt_0978 · 05 Aug 2009

There might be more to this memory leaking bug, ie. i've got PS CS4 running, several images loaded in, IE8 running with several tabs up, WLM running and a few ancillary background programs inc. (and don't start, it's not the resource-hog it used to be) NIS2010 beta and after a while IE8 starts lagging as does PS CS4 and WLM. so what's that all about? In Taskmanager everything seems to be running normally.

Everlong · 05 Aug 2009

Antman said:

Well, that is odd. Running it from Tools caused dllhost, not Explorer, to consume ~2.26 GB vs ~3.1 GB running in cmd. Still haven't updated chipset.

I tested this myself as well.

dllhost.exe used 2.69GB RAM, and released it as soon as I cancelled the scan.

Ran it in cmd again and 3.1GB was used. Released as soon as I ended it as well.

I'm using Nforce chipset drivers 15.35 on a 750i chipset.

Those two values are the highest the usage got, and computer didn't crash.

z3r010 said:

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/080509-microsoft-win7-flaw.ht

I'm famous

Antman said:

I wonder what would happen if I ran my mobo with 1GB RAM, or even two. Would chkdsk start paging? And what if the drive I'm testing is my page volume?

I thought I'd try testing the drive while my page file was on it. It wouldn't let me saying it's in use, and it would need to run when the computer next restarts.

And as it's becoming clearer that this isn't as much of a bug as we thought at the start, I don't think there would be any problems either when running just 1GB of RAM.

I think the RAM usage, like what ReadyBoost does, is relative to the amount of RAM in total, such as I have 4GB and the max usage of RAM altogether on my system is 3.59GB while chkdsk is running (chkdsk uses 3.1GB), so with 1GB RAM, I think the you'd see around 800MB total usage (as an example). Though that's just based on the fact nobody here has reported a system crash or a BSoD yet.

dmex · 06 Aug 2009

Everlong18 said:

I'm famous

Thats quite an achievement, congratulations! :)

Muad Dib · 06 Aug 2009

Muad Dib said:

.
..
....

Reminds me of the guy who goes to the Doctor with a rock in his hand. Every few seconds he hits himself in the face with the rock and says, "Doc every time I do this it hurts!". The Doctor says "Don't do that anymore. That will be $25 please."

If it is not a bug, MS may be the Doctor. Just don't be surprised.

The Doctor has spoken.

Downloading from Technet now.

Snufffed · 06 Aug 2009

maccik said:

Source: Ryan Price’s Blog

Microsoft has also posted that this MASTER BUG is not a OS problem. it is a CHIPSET Problem....I have tested on my system and all 8 HDDs run CHKDSK /f (100%) no errors.

Info from The Inquirer and The Register