RSSTesters claim discovery of serious CHKDSK bug in Windows 7 RTM build
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published August 5, 2009, 4:33 PM
A contributor to the online forum TheHotfix.net has provided visual evidence of what appears to be a serious memory leak caused by the CHKDSK hard disk integrity checking utility included with a build of Windows 7 that has been tagged for RTM. The bug appears to occur during phase 4 of the disk check, and can push resource usage to the 96% level.
Tester Jordan M. Jacob provides a picture of the memory leak in progress, as depicted in Windows Task Manager, a portion of which is excerpted here. (It doesn't bode well for the integrity of the test that Apple's iTunes drivers also appear to be running.) Jacob goes on to warn that the leak is capable of sending the OS into the dreaded blue screen of death (BSOD).
Jacob called the alleged bug a "showstopper," saying it's big enough to warrant Microsoft suspending its release to manufacturing for Windows 7 -- a process which has already begun. Tomorrow is the anticipated date when MSDN and TechNet subscribers will have their first opportunity to download the finalized code, which is already being installed on new PCs by participating OEMs.
But should the bug's identity and severity be confirmed by Microsoft, it actually has other means available to it to quell the problem. One such mechanism is, quite ironically, the very thing which the Web site discovering the bug is named after: a hotfix, distributed via Windows Update and conceivably downloadable and installable during the Windows 7 setup process.
That almost too-obvious fact didn't stop one outside source, who confirmed the presence of the bug for himself, to sound the red-alert klaxon of doom, declaring the launch process already derailed and leading the story with the saliva-dripping words, "Oh boy!"
One Hotfix.net user answered Jacob by saying the problem may not actually be Microsoft's at all, but rather an issue with motherboard manufacturers that have yet to issue updates to their chipset drivers for the RTM builds. Nonetheless, the sheer volume of the virtual pow-wow among enthusiasts' sites today managed to rise to such a level that the president of Microsoft's Windows Division himself, Steven Sinofsky, responded to Chris123NT's forum in person this afternoon (Microsoft verified to Betanews this afternoon that the respondent is, in fact, Sinofsky).
Sinofsky said that Microsoft has been unable to reproduce the crash, though it has seen increased memory usage by CHKDSK. He then said that behavior was by design, intended "to speed things up" rather than slow things down. Later, he went on to say the following:
While we appreciate the drama of "critical bug" and then the pickup of "showstopper" that I've seen, we might take a step back and realize that this might not have that defcon level. Bugs that are so severe as to require immediate patches and attention would have to have no workarounds and would generally be such that a large set of people would run across them in the normal course of using their PC.We appreciate the kind words that such a bug as above is "out of place" with Windows 7 -- we're working hard. We are certainly going to continue to look for, monitor, and address issues as they arise if required. So far this is not one of those issues.
Some have reported...that this specific issue repros and then goes away with updated drivers. We haven't yet confirmed that either but continue to try. We just kicked off overnight stress testing of 40 machines of variants as reported by [forum user] FireRx. We'll see.
Let's see if we can work on this one and future issues together. Deep breath.
The sports team in my area is better than the sports team in your area :}~
Let's call a spade a spade. That is a rather amusing bug that probably should have been caught by the beta testers (if it IS a bug). Still, probably a relatively easy fix and you can be 100% sure that there will be countless other bugs found over time - as with ALL major OS releases (including OSX).
Not newsworthy really. Also, there is no value in trying to blame Apple for it kholdstare and others - I can only assume you were joking.
Score: 1
|Krytyczna luka w Windows 7 (RTM)!
http://wujekp.xt.pl/inde...c=923.msg11846#msg11846
:)
Score: 1
|Well the RTM is available via Technet\MSDN right now so it wasn't a big enough problem to stop the release. Lets forget about it rather than give all the Windows FUDsters something to harp on about for weeks.
Score: -1
|this is why i run itunes and any other apple product on a virtual machine instead of my main OS
Score: -1
|Holy Gubmonte and Chadamus ! Are you two serious? I can only assume and hope you're not in an IT related career.
Score: -1
|Shockingly, there is a user available solution to this. CHKDSK, a command prompt application, can be aborted by pressing CONTROL-C. Once the process is aborted, problem solved! I realize this is a miraculous unusual step that apparently some have forgotten, but then again, phase 4 chksdk generally only happens in chkdsk /r or chkdsk /r /x command line tasks.
The # of people impacted therefore seems to be low, that is of those who are installing Windows7 on drives with potential bad sectors seeking to do a recovery.
I've tried to reproduce this (I ran an /r /x just to give it a test) though not on the RTM... and uh, so far, I can't turn this up.
I tend to agree with MS.. this isn't much of a showstopper. Ranks right up there with the still yet unfixed poorly written help files :)
Score: 0
|That's it then. Looks like I'll have to wait for Windows 8 before I can finally upgrade from Win 3.1 . That 2GB leak will just destroy my 386/1mb! ;)
Score: -1
|Meh, using up 2 GB of RAM on a process that hardly anybody actually even knows to run (hint: you have to check the box that says "scan for and attempt recovery ...")is not that big a deal. And 82 processes is nothing special on a system that is used for a little more than p0rn surfing and twits (ok, tweets - whatever).
Now if this 3GB PC was using 96% of its CPU for a sustained - I would probably use the word "showstopper." But not for this.
And ... I love the Sinofsky quotes.
"Deep breath."
Score: -2
|Yah, basically one dude on one site claimed he got a BSOD (for all we know he had a bad memory module), and now other sites are picking it up with headlines like "Microsoft callously dimisses critical showstopper bug in Windows 7, kicks kitten"
Ah, to witness the birth of a meme, it's a beautiful thing.
Score: -1
|I know what's causing this...this test is invalid...I bet Apple put in something in their drivers to cause these problems....Want the proof...it's all those Apple stuff running while chkdsk is working...
Seriously...with million + hardware and software configurations...Windows 7 has been fantastic...Kudos to MS for this and boo to the guy at TheHotFix....that guy needs the hotfix....
Score: -3
|XP lovers trying to prolong the life of their OS. Nothing here. Now move on.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/B...?p=1235&tag=nl.e589
Score: -4
|XP users whom haven't moved on yet are well morons and i was one of the faithful.. i can't stand looking at XP these days, at least not a OOB install
Score: -4
|Hear, hear!
Initial testing of the Beta and RC at our office...and now I have the RC on my main work desktop.
I just couldn't take using XP anymore.
Now if I could just unpin via dragging them off the taskbar, I'd be even happier.
Basic stuff here, folks...if you can drag an icon to a dock, you should be able to drag it off... I have a taskbar/toolbar section that I drag current projects to and move finished products from. I know most folks probably won't notice/swap taskbar items as much as I do, but it's a basic function and one of those, "everyone in the world of "docks" does this...why can't Microsoft????"
Meh... No big, really. It just gnaws at me.
Score: -1
|This is totally OT, but what the heck.
Interesting, I hadn't noticed that but you're right. It does seem inconsistent. Likely explanation: they decided that people were more likely to accidentally drag off the taskbar than to actually want to do it.
On a bit of software I worked on, there was a keyboard shortcut that was quite easy to hit accidentally, and it was very unclear to inexpert users what had happened. I never met a single user who used the shortcut, and I met multiple who had hit it by mistake and been terribly confused. Extrapolating, we probably had a lot of unhappy users because of it. But the bosses wouldn't let me remove it. Sigh.
Score: 0
|Why are XP users "morons"? They have something that finally after many years is stable and works pretty well. Why throw it away for new super expensive shiny unstable/unknown Microsoft Windows? Oh, because Microsoft needs to pad it coffers.
Score: -1
|hey i can admit, i was a moron for thinking Vista was a broken mess, i put my trust in what everyone else was saying at the time when i shouldn't of, never again
Score: -1
|Vista _is_ a bloated, broken mess, i have the displeasure of running it every day. At least when i go home i can use my Mac too.
Score: -2
|It's not unstable it's just not worth it and a pain in the ass.
Score: -1
|Lots of important info left out that needs to be mentioned or made more clear: phase 4 of chkdsk is the equivalent of running chkdsk /r, which locates and marks off bad sectors. Those who do not run the /r switch are not seeing this issue. It's also only showing on non-system volumes, *not* boot drives. Not all people are having the problem, short of maybe increased RAM usage. The crash/BSOD's are not happening to 100% of the people.
This is f-a-r from being a showstopper issue and has been beaten with a *herd* of dead horses all over the net. A quick Windows Update if needed will solve this issue (hopefully) or as the MS guy said, appropriate chipset drivers get released. All the people yapping about this being a showstopper bug must also think the sky is falling LOL. It's too late for MS to re-build the OS as far as I can tell, given that RTM distro's start in mass tomorrow to those with MDSN/Technet/etc.
Score: 7
|i've seen it in the past.
The check disk and anti virals are twirling around each other like showroom dancers.
Score: -2
|think i've seen this in Vista as well, multipatch plz? :)
Score: -1
|jesus perhaps it has to do with running 82 processes at the one time lol, what kind of person lets that happen?
Score: 3
|Heh...didn't notice that. Ouch!
38, here...with FF running....default install.
Score: -1
|34 Vista, 24 Win7
Score: -1
|You know, process count is not a very good indicator of system health or performance. The scheduler is perfectly capable of handling that many, so long as they are mostly idle.
For that matter, neither is memory usage. If you still have free physical memory, your system is fine.
Score: 0
|but that many processes running at startup surely decreases performance and ups the chances of conflicts and issues even ever so slightly during normal usage, unless you have SSD and 82 is an indicator in and of itself a user that doesn't care about how their PC performs, doesn't care about squeezing out every ounce of hp Windows can offer
my copy of Vista at startup is 30, what i consider ideal for that OS, and pretty much zero tasks scheduled at startup & 100% idle CPU when i'm away from the PC, i wouldn't accept anything less :P
Score: 0
|Heh.. *love* the response.
So... if it *is* an issue that will be common to many installations, it *may* be more common than they are hinting at:
Follow: Many utilities (defragmenters mainly) use CHKDSK to scan the disk prior to defragmentation (a good practice). Anyone using these utilities then, would be high-risk candidates.
If it's not, and the words from Steven are truth, well.... it's not as though a simple update (driver or otherwise) wouldn't cure it after the first update.
Score: -1
|CHKDSK? What is this? 1996?
Score: -3
|Of course, there's not much reason to use a defrag utility anymore, unless you're obsessive. I doubt many people do that.
Score: -2
|What utility still uses CHKDSK? Acronis uses their own tool, not Chkdsk to measure disc health. O&O uses their own. Norton uses their own (dd), so does Diskkeeper uses their own tool, etc. I'm trying to think of any tool... outside of windows itself, that spawns chkdsk as a process. And I can't think of any. It'd have to be some cheap crap to do that, actually..
Score: -1
|Yeah, cheap...like the *free* defragmenting utilities? ;)
Score: 0
|...or the IT department....
Score: 0
|an update on this 'showstopper' bug
Engineering Windows 7: What we do with a bug report? http://tinyurl.com/muotb9
Score: 0
|