Windows Vista Users Hit With 'Purple Screen Of
Death'
The lockup occurs when there's a conflict between certain system
drivers and Windows Vista's Desktop Window Manager.
By Paul McDougall, InformationWeek
Dec. 5, 2007
URL:
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204701109
While most users of Microsoft Windows-based PCs have seen their
systems lockup and display the dreaded 'blue screen of death,' a
new, lavender-hued variant of the problem has emerged.
The so-called "purple screen of death" occurs when there's a
conflict between certain system drivers and Windows Vista's Desktop
Window Manager, according to researchers at NeoSmart -- a nonprofit
technology tracking firm that first spotted the issue.
When the glitch occurs, windows on the Vista desktop turn purple
and become unresponsive, according to NeoSmart. "It's caused by a
low-level problem in the kernel, and it does make you want to
restart your PC," NeoSmart researchers said in a blog post on the
subject.
NeoSmart concedes that the problem is rare, and that most Vista
users probably haven't encountered it. "It's something to do with
the way the Windows Vista kernel handles a certain exception in the
graphics driver subsystem."
One poster on the NeoSmart blog said he was hit with the 'purple
screen of death' while his computer was equipped with Nvidia
graphics drivers that had not yet been optimized for Vista. "It
creeped me out... I mean, why purple, of all colors!?," wrote Mark
Anders.
While the "purple screen of death" seems rare and not terribly
serious, the system conflict behind the problem is the latest
example of the almost innumerable issues that software makers face
when rolling out major product upgrades.
Mac users have reported that Apple's new Leopard OS is itself
subject to the "blue screen of death" -- a major system crash that
previously was confined mostly to Microsoft operating
systems.
Part of the problem is that, in their efforts to outdo each other,
Apple and Microsoft are loading literally hundreds of new features
into their latest offerings -- and testing all of them in all
conceivable usage scenarios would be costly and impractical.
In the end, most software makers rely on post-release service packs
to fix problems that emerge after a product has shipped. Service
Pack 1 for Windows Vista is currently undergoing beta testing.
