Talk:Crash (computing)

Hardware damage
Article says "On earlier personal computers, it was acutally possible to cause hardware damage through trying to write to hardware addresses outside of the system's main memory."

This sounds like urban legend. What sources are there for this? -R. S. Shaw 08:06, 16 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I don't know if it's actually true, but it is certainly possible in theory. Many small systems take shortcuts with the memory address decoding, and this often involves ignoring addresses outside the planned range. Settin gup such addresses could in theory result in bus contention which in theory could cause physical damage to the CPU or other components. As I say, whether this really did occur on a real machine is open to question. Graham 10:44, 16 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I see. For this to happen, it seems like one must have an extra (incompatible) card installed on the bus, which will respond simultaneously with the normal (shortcut) system component which also responds (due to the non-full address decoding).  In a way, that sounds more like a physical hardware misconfiguration than a software crash.  -R. S. Shaw 20:17, 25 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I've heard this from others too. I think the most known example of this happening was the earliest versions of the commodore PET which had no sanity checking on what was sent to the CRT. This meant that if you POKEd (wrote a value to a location in memory) physical damage could be done to the circuitry. This is the Killer poke Wilsonsamm (talk) 00:44, 30 March 2008 (UTC)


 * It sounds like urban legend, but can happen. It's also possible to cause damage through [un]intentionally writing bad data to old hardware. Aside from the CRT example, the "washing machine" races with magnetic tape drives is a good example. Don't have a link handy, but the article would certainly need one. --68.94.219.198 (talk) 17:08, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Confusing line
However, until 1993, with the release of Windows NT 3.1, this hasn't been the case for the average PC. Eh? Sum0 19:23, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Fixed. Linguofreak 00:41, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Rubbernecking
McAfee have released a video which shows an example of Spyware attacking and a computer crash, and have called the act of watching this happen "Rubbernecking" (as in watching a car wreck). Here's where I found the video: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/video/spyware, but I can't find the actual source. I don't know where the term "Rubbernecking" came from- is it new or widely used? Should it merit a section of this article? Leemorrison 21:46, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * 'Rubbernecking' is American slang for people craning their heads as they pass to see an unusual sight. It is used when cars slow and the passengers look over the results of an auto accident (crash), and is only rarely used in other contexts.  The usage for computer-crash viewing is essentially a joke, non-notable, and shouldn't be included.  -R. S. Shaw 19:09, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

UNIX crashes less often
I removed an assertion under the OS crashes section that UNIX-based operating systems crash less often than those from any other source. Although it is widely known that UNIX is more stable than old MS-Windows systems, which crashed frequently, it is not true that UNIX is entirely immune from crashes, as the statement implies. An "operating system" which simply boots and displays "Hello World" will virtually never crash.

Removing the statement eliminates little or no factual information.

Pcu123456789 20:02, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

When a Server Crashes..
After the server crashes, is the server still good? Or is there damage to it or the information? Can a user just restart it and search for the bug to fix, or is it a more costly problem? iwanturCAT 03:09, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

It depends. If a process crashed while writing to a file, then the file may be corrupt. Wilsonsamm (talk) 00:47, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

OS crashes
I cropped back this section. It added nothing, and didn't explain anything. It also seemed focused on MS Windows, which seems wrong in this context. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 12:53, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, thats basically why I put the tag on the page. What is there now looks good, so if nobody objects, I'll remove the tag. Nwwaew (Talk Page) (Contribs) (E-mail me) 19:09, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Okay, this freaks me out a bit- that paragraph was added June 18th, 2006, and appears to have stayed there the entire time. Nwwaew (Talk Page) (Contribs) (E-mail me) 19:15, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
 * If the problems seans solved then I removed the POV tag. - Nabla 14:15, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Windows 98 setup error.jpg
Image:Windows 98 setup error.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 20:05, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Confusing Tag
I understand this article but I have to think rather hard about some parts to understand where the author is coming from. When I get a chance I will make some clarifications but in the mean time maybe someone will beat me to it. Rsduhamel (talk) 07:52, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Edited page
I removed the sentence 'In an ideal world, well-written operating systems would always remain stable even when individual applications crash.' because it is somewhat off-topic, and does not belong in Wikipedia. Armiris (talk) 17:54, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Etymology
I cleared up the etymology section a bit for grammar, readability, and accuracy--the last specifically referring to removing the BSOD reference. Put in some more information from the actual Hard disk failure section to explain the derivation of computer crash and hard drive crash. It's a little unclear that "crash" is derived from "drive crash" crash...perhaps that "computer crash" evolved from "drive crash", really. This really needs some source info. --68.94.219.198 (talk) 17:15, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

On Merging Crash with Hang
No. Really, no. Crashes and hangs are distinct things, with very different causes. I've had users contacting customer support recently with claims of application crashes when they really meant the app hung for 20 seconds waiting for a bloody printer to initialize -- their justification for using the wrong description: wikipedia. The more we can do to educate readers about the differences between crashes and hangs, the better. Ccox@adobe.com (talk) 16:41, 9 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree. These are two distinctly different phenomenon. I am removing the tag. –CWenger (talk) 00:08, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Cleanup required
There is still confusing / contradicting statements in the article that blurs the definition of Crash and Hang. This is an artifact of the article being focused on subjective user experience and less about computer logic or specific routines. See cleanup recommendations in section Crash (computing) Stephen Charles Thompson (talk) 00:52, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Soft and hard crashes
Should the article contain a description of the difference between soft (potentially recoverable) and hard (non-recoverable) crashes? Thatfield977 (talk) 16:13, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Duplicate article
There is a duplicate article at Fatal system error. This article focuses on describing the appearance to the user. This Fatal System Error article focuses on describing the logical process and names specific routines.

Should we propose a merge or somehow differentiate? Should we put it to a vote? Stephen Charles Thompson (talk) 00:40, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Snow Crash
Although mostly known because of the SciFi book by this name, a snow crash is another valid example of a computer crash. I thought this might be an interesting inclusion to the article, so I added a Wiki link under the 'See Also' section, though as I'm quite new at editing on Wikipedia I was thinking it might be good to retain some opinion here on the talk page. DilkROM (talk) 10:50, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Trying to clean up the flags?
Hi, I'm new to Wikipedia and attempting to 'edit' my first article. If anyone can help, I'd like to know how adding references works on an article like this. There doesn't seem to be very many references for this article and I would like to add some and get the flag removed, but I don't even know where to look. How can references be added to a general concept like this, is there I guide I could look at for adding some citations to a concept page?

Thanks for your help anyone. Past Bedtime   [talk]   19:49, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Dead Links
External Link: Computer Crash no longer exists. Please rectify Tiwaking (talk) 20:37, 13 May 2014 (UTC)