Tag Archives: crashing

Making Windows Slower Part 2: Process Creation

Posted on October 15, 2018 by brucedawson

Windows has long had a reputation for slow file operations and slow process creation. Have you ever wanted to make these operations even slower? This weeks’ blog post covers a technique you can use to make process creation on Windows … Continue reading →

Posted in Code Reliability, Investigative Reporting, Performance, Programming, Quadratic | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Developers Rejoice Again

Posted on September 5, 2013 by brucedawson

Just a few short weeks ago I recommended that all developers running 64-bit Windows 7 (that is, most developers) should install a hot-fix to correct a stack corruption bug that would hit anytime a 32-bit program crashed in the debugger … Continue reading →

Posted in Code Reliability, Programming, Visual Studio | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Developers Rejoice–Windows 7 Stack Corruption Fixed!

Posted on August 19, 2013 by brucedawson

64-bit Windows 7 SP1 has a stack corruption bug that affects developers. Any developer with an AVX capable processor who is writing 32-bit code on 64-bit Window 7 SP1 is vulnerable. That sounds like a lot of conditions but I … Continue reading →

Posted in Code Reliability, Programming, Visual Studio | Tagged , , , , , | 17 Comments

Should This Windows 7 Bug be Fixed?

Posted on March 11, 2013 by brucedawson

Last year I reported on a bug in 64-bit Windows 7 SP1’s support for AVX-capable processors. This bug causes stack corruption when a 32-bit program crashes while being debugged in Visual Studio, even if AVX is not used. Microsoft has … Continue reading →

Posted in Code Reliability, Programming, Visual Studio | Tagged , , , , , | 84 Comments

More Adventures in Failing to Crash Properly

Posted on July 22, 2012 by brucedawson

In last week’s episode we discussed how 32-bit processes on 64-bit Windows might corrupt the exception state after a crash, and how any processes on 64-bit Windows might actually continue running after a crash. Serious stuff. This week’s installment of … Continue reading →

Posted in AltDevBlogADay, Code Reliability, Programming, Visual Studio | Tagged , , , , | 9 Comments

When Even Crashing Doesn’t Work

Posted on July 5, 2012 by brucedawson

I’ve written previously about the importance of crashing in order to improve code quality. However even the seemingly simple task of crashing can be more error prone than you might expect. I’ve recently become aware of two different problems that … Continue reading →

Posted in AltDevBlogADay, Code Reliability, Programming, Visual Studio | Tagged , , , , , | 26 Comments

Increased Reliability Through More Crashes

Posted on December 7, 2011 by brucedawson

Shipping games that don’t crash is hard, and it’s important to use every tool available to try to find bugs. Static code analysis is one technique that I’ve discussed in the past and for some classes of bugs it is … Continue reading →

Posted in AltDevBlogADay, Code Reliability, Programming | Tagged , , | 18 Comments