Re: Slightly OT - Vista Directories/DOS Batch

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from Harry Binswanger  on
Sat, 18 Oct 2008 18:39:00 -0400


> Actually, explorer can crash.

Everything _can_ crash.

> It then automatically re-launches itself (or tries to).

Dead processes don't restart themselves. Winlogon.exe restarts
it, if winlogon is configured to do so in the Registry.

> When it crashes, your desktop goes blank, and then if it
> relaunches, it re-appears.

As I said, "goodbye desktop". My point was, if explorer.exe
crashes, you don't have a fully functional Windows computer
anymore. Already-running apps may still be running, and you can
access and operate them, but the Windows "shell" -- icons,
taskbar, Start menu, the whole edifice around which Windows is
built -- all gone. When this happens, you can manually restart
explorer.exe if you're able to open the task manager, or from a
command line -- it's an argument for always having a DOS window
open (I do). Most people just panic and reboot. It looks like
a computer near death.

I said explorer "never crashes". Basically, it's true. When it
crashes, you have an underlying problem: a virus that
deliberately killed it, an uncompliant (faulty) program, a
compiler error, or -- most commonly -- totally exhausted
resources (trying to do too much with too little). This latter
can make it _appear_ that explorer is dead, when what is really
happening is that the computer, lacking memory and processor
speed, is just trying to catch up, is caching data to disk like
crazy because memory is "full", and hasn't given any CPU time
slices to explorer (because none available to give). Try
running a computation- and memory-intensive app like Photoshop
on a weak computer and opening a bunch of pictures in Camera
Raw. You'll see what I mean. Any memory-hog app, even old DOS
apps that think they own the CPU (games especially), can cause
this effect.

FWIW...

-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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