BSOD in Windows 7

[Robert Maxwell]

What's so bad about rebooting? It only takes 15 seconds, and in standby it eats much more than when its off.

Maybe I like to keep the same set of programs open for weeks on end. What business is it of yours, really?

LOL, no need to get defensive. I'm just wondering what kind of programs need to run for weeks.

Various notepad instances, media players, etc. Back in the Windows 2000 days, it could take a couple minutes to start up your computer and then a few more minutes to get your programs loaded, but once you were up and running it was quite snappy. The boot performance enhancements were part of XP (after a service pack, I believe) so you can't use that to judge how long a W2K system took to boot up.

In short, I would rather the system take a few seconds to wake up from standby or reload the RAM from hibernation than wait 3-5 minutes to get booted up from scratch and have to reopen everything. What can I say, I'm lazy and impatient.

 

[Jadzia]

I use standby a lot, and I keep programs open for weeks.

For a start, it's just quicker, and I don't like waiting for the OS to load. <5 seconds to come out of standby is good.

Secondly, projects I'm working may involve running several applications: the IDE, a graphics editor with various images open that I'm working on, some explorer windows showing directories that I'm working in, and about four copies of notepad containing random cut and pastes of code, or ideas I've had or memos for everyday things.

I like being able to switch on and have all that conveniently in place so I can carry on where I left off. It's like returning to my desk and finding it how I left it.

 

[sojourner]

Standby mode?!?! Hibernate!?!?! Gosh golly gee! I ain't never heard of them thar things.

To be honest, I have been in the IT field long enough to remember when standby and hibernate were introduced, and how half the time they didn't work right and you would have to reboot the system anyway to get it stable again. Hell, I remember early laptops going in to hibernate and refusing to come out at all. You would have to pull the battery and then hold the power button in then it would startup after being reconnected to power. Desktop PC's were sometimes worse, you'd have to pull the cmos battery which required opening the case. I just never learned to trust either function.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Standby mode?!?! Hibernate!?!?! Gosh golly gee! I ain't never heard of them thar things.

To be honest, I have been in the IT field long enough to remember when standby and hibernate were introduced, and how half the time they didn't work right and you would have to reboot the system anyway to get it stable again. Hell, I remember early laptops going in to hibernate and refusing to come out at all. You would have to pull the battery and then hold the power button in then it would startup after being reconnected to power. Desktop PC's were sometimes worse, you'd have to pull the cmos battery which required opening the case. I just never learned to trust either function.

I had issues with standby over the years but in using many desktops and laptops I've never had problems with hibernating. It's an awesome feature as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Jadzia]

To be honest, I have been in the IT field long enough to remember when standby and hibernate were introduced, and how half the time they didn't work right and you would have to reboot the system anyway to get it stable again.

Hibernate won't work if there is some sort of hardware conflict. I don't know if that has since been resolved.

It's because, if you swapped hardware while the system was hibernating, it could cause serious problems when it comes out of hibernation. So if it sees the hardware description has changed, it will boot normally. That makes sense.

But if there are unidentified devices/ conflicting devices, windows won't necessarily know if the hardware description has changed or not, so plays safe and boots normally. Windows doesn't let you know any of this however.

 

[23skidoo]

I'm arriving very late at the party, but I noticed in the original post the statement that the BSOD tended to trigger when running Internet Explorer. Just asking, but if the BSOD was only triggering with IE (if it was triggering at other times you can pretty much ignore this question), did you try using another browser like Firefox or Opera? I've run into a few cases where folks have thought IE is the only option. (Sort of like us Mac users and Safari; I ran into one guy who thought OSX would only run Safari, until he was told he could run Firefox, Opera, or even a Mac version of IE if he wanted to.) It used to be the case that you'd often run into webpages that only worked with IE but since people smartened up I rarely encounter this anymore.

Alex

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

^ I only use IE at home to access my work email. That's it.

Even if I had no real use for it at home, I'd still stop at nothing to fix a major problem like BSOD.

I just don't like things I set-up or built not working. Plus it really could be a harbinger of bigger problems.