Black screen of death after Win10 update? Microsoft blames HP Microsoft is pointing the finger of blame at HP Inc's factory image for black screens of death appearing after a Windows Update. Scores of PC owners took to the HP forums last week to report that Windows 10 updates released September 12 were slowing down the login process. Users stated that once they downloaded the updates and …
Is IMHO the achilles heel of Windows systems. A single point of failure if ever there was one.
I'm surprised that there have not been more attacks on it in the past.
Perhaps this news will spur the bad guys to target it in the future.
So much crud gets put in it that is really becomes unmanagable pretty Quickly
Group Policies is another area that IMHO gets used for all sorts of things it shouldn't
Perhaps (wishful thinking I know) one day MS will remove the registry and replace it with something more appropriate?
That, and all settings stored within are loaded into memory at all times ... even if the app using those settings is not running ... imagine on Linux, systemd loading all configuration files in /etc into memory, laugh not, who knows, Poettering might do this one day and call the binary regeditd.
PS: I am sorry for giving Poettering yet another bad idea
"imagine on Linux, systemd loading all configuration files in /etc into memory"
except this 'loading all configuration files' process would happen for EVERY! SINGLE! APPLICATION! that requests even the most TRIVIAL of information from such an eldritch abomination, if you want to duplicate what "the Registry" appears to do. In other words, it won't be cached. it will be (in a paranoid manner) READ FROM DISK (not from a cache) and then WRITTEN TO DISK when it changes (not write-through cache, but physical writes) and the individual processes will WAIT for this to complete and block in the API EVERY! SINGLE! TIME! to duplicate what appears to happen in "the Registry".
Because, if you're Micro-shaft, the disk contents _might_ have CHANGED "not through the OS" (even if it can't) and so DAMMIT, we *MUST* *MAKE* *SURE* by RE-READING it, and PHYSICALLY WRITING it, EVERY! SINGLE! TIME!!!
(or so that's the way it seems, when I've measured performance)
"IMHO the achilles heel of Windows systems. A single point of failure if ever there was one."
It's a Btrieve based database with resilience features like transaction logging, rollback and snapshots and with fully integrated auditing and ACLs. So way faster, more resilient and more secure than say text files...
"I'm surprised that there have not been more attacks on it in the past."
Because it's well designed and hard to attack
"Perhaps this news will spur the bad guys to target it in the future."
Unlikely - if you could attack the registry then you already own the OS.
"So much crud gets put in it that is really becomes unmanagable pretty Quickly"
No idea what "crud" you think goes in there but it doesn't need "managing g" so it's not an issue.
"Group Policies is another area that IMHO gets used for all sorts of things it shouldn't
GPOs are for remote configuration of settings. Something that's so much harder to automate in many other OSs without 3rd party products. What else do you think they get used for then?
"It's a Btrieve based database with resilience features like transaction logging, rollback and snapshots and with fully integrated auditing and ACLs. So way faster, more resilient and more secure than say text files..."
HA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...
*cough*
Oh, were you serious?
I haven't seen any reference that says the registry uses Btrieve internally or not. I remember seeing it and NOT liking Btrieve a long time ago. I remember Novell really liked it for some reason [so much they bought the company]. I think microshaft could NOT have made much worse of a decision to base the registry's internal structure on, if it's really using Btrieve. They SHOULD have used a well-known file system like UFS (at that time, I don't think EXT existed) and set up a "file system in a file" for it, with journaling and locking thrown in as needed, CACHED! AT! THE! SYSTEM! LEVEL! for performance. That would have made a LOT more sense...
From the Wiki page :
"Btrieve is not a relational database management system (RDBMS). Early descriptions of Btrieve referred to it as a record manager"
You are obviously a Microsoft patsy. The Registry has resilience ? In what universe ? One wrong change and you can reinstall the whole thing. It's "well designed" ?!? It's a fucking text file ! Oh, right, you must live in Colorado. I hear they've got good stuff to smoke over there. Seeing such arguments, that has to be true.
The Registry is an abomination, a blight on security and stability and that must be the reason why Microsoft is the only OS maker on the planet that uses it.
But you go on and roll yourself another one. I'm sure you're really happy with it, but try not to kid yourself : the Registry is there for DRM purposes and to ensure that your computer is in Microsoft's control.
"You are obviously a Microsoft patsy. The Registry has resilience ? In what universe ?
In this one. It's a transactional database with a variety of roll back and corruption protection methods.
"One wrong change and you can reinstall the whole thing"
Or simply roll back to the last good config - which can be done via the boot menu.
"The Registry is an abomination, a blight on security and stability "
Well it's certainly more secure than text files. for instance how to you allow someone to edit just one field of a text file? Or just to read one field? Or audit changes without a complete version management system? And a single config repository is by nature more stable and faster that parsing say multiple text files...
"the Registry is there for DRM purposes"
No, it's there to store all system configuration and application info securely and fast in one consistent place.
"to ensure that your computer is in Microsoft's control."
It's pretty easy to change and edit if you need to.
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Are you under the impression that the nature of the registry is fundamentally different?
They are both key-value stores, broken down by a section. Sure, the section is represented by a tree now, but there's nothing stopping a section called:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Whatever]
The same as anything else.
The fact is that the registry is opaque, proprietary, not easily edited, not documented AT ALL in any kind of depth, and the very basis for everything from driver .inf files (cough...) to MSI install scripts (cough...) to group policy templates (nothing more than lists of registry keys with "nice" text).
The problem with the registry is that there is no failsafe, default, rollback, etc. for many things. If you hit the wrong thing, you can stop Windows booting. That's just ludicrous. In some cases there is literally NO CHOICE but to registry-edit to remove things (e.g. stale network printer entries - you think you can do it with command-line tool, print-management, etc.? Think again) but the documentation of what each section - even under Microsoft Windows - even does is completely absent or opaque.
The only advantage of the registry over WIN.INI is per-key permissions. But even that's a misdirection as if you have access to the registry then you're only a short path away from causing havoc anyway, same as you shouldn't ever have let ordinary users edit WIN.INI
To be honest, gconf is basically the same thing on Linux distros, etc. But there's a reason that most config in /etc/ is still in plain-text single files.
There's nothing wrong with having a central registry, as such. It's just entirely misused, completely misorganised, doesn't have effective control/rollback (it just keeps a copy, which is entirely useless), and has never been documented to any significant extent. Things like \Software are pretty much a free-for-all, like My Documents has become.
Personally, I think that each application should have a "registry" for each user that runs it. Get rid of those horrible NTUSER.DAT files in the user profiles. Isolate all the application settings away from things like Windows internals. Isolate one user's settings from everyone else's (without having to dig into user SID's etc.). And if you want to clear someone's, say, Chrome settings, just wipe out Chrome.reg in that user's profile folder.
But, to be honest, I want to move all that stuff into a single file per application too. There's no need for everything to access My Documents, make its own folders, spread into Application Data, add registry entries, etc. etc. etc. When it comes time to remove or find things it's a nightmare. One file, per application, inside a user's profile. You can have one file, in a "computer" location, that overrides that if you want.
The registry is a mess, but not because of it's storage format. Because it's completely unmanaged and undocumented.
Quote:The registry is a mess, but not because of it's storage format. Because it's completely unmanaged and undocumented.
That's what I was alluding to in my post (and the rest of your post makes a lot of sense) but the downvoters have been let out of school but hey, that's life eh?
SystemD is not the answer either but for very different reasons.
My gut feeling that this POSS* is well documented within MS and it's quite possible is compartmentalized such that no one person can see all the documentation. Or perhaps, they just have some sort of "pain of death" if anyone ever made a copy and released it. Pity, the person who released said documentation would be a rather large hero in my book.
*Pile of Steaming Shitte....
Slurp blame HP for a registry key ... hm, so their update does not properly handle a certain value of an unspecified registry key which causes the update to stall for ten minutes ... weird, reads like bad coding ... I think you have two cases:
The registry key value is invalid, in which case you log that and fix the registry key value
The registry key value is invalid and cannot be fixed, in which case you log that and you exit
All of this before attempting to install the update, of course ...
How about a configure script, Slurp ?
Presumably HP should've set
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
Policies\LoginService\UserExperience\SecretFolkLore\
PointlesslyDelayShowingDesktopForThisManyMinutes to 0 instead of 10.
Nope:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Appx\AppxAllUserStore\Applications
Looks like HP tampered with / inadvertantly included some .NET framework and Visual C++ runtime settings in their default image, which don't correspond to what's actually installed.
Sure, shouldn't bring things to a crashing halt (MS fault), Windows should be made to look for this on update from now on and forever more (MS fault), but at the same time, HP appear to have tinkered with things that they shouldn't have been tinkering with or not using proper slipstreaming processes to build their images.
Simple reasoning: what moronic programmer parses and "just" applies properties without checking if their values are actually within the right limitations?
And the reason I use the word 'moronic' is because this is a classic example of how backdoors and exploits come to life.
The Registry, a monolithic store of settings, is very bad design. Good design would be discrete settings files for each application, including the operating system, which requires them. Critically, these settings files should be deletable individually or en masse, in case of corruption, in which case they will be automatically replaced by default settings files - and the computer will remain functional.
Before anyone objects, and claims that such a scheme would be unworkable, I’d like to point out that there are operating systems available today which use exactly this functionality, with great success.
Microsoft has done great things recently and, I hope, will continue to do so. I look forward to the abolishment of The Registry - except as a stub to support legacy applications.
"Microsoft has done great things recently".
Such as??
Windows 8.1?
Windows 10?
Deceptive and potentially illegally installing software peeps didn't want?
The ribbon?
Killing messenger / outlook express?
Skype?
Win Phone?*
Forcing gamers to upgrade to W10 for DX12 which wont install on Win7
Yeah, the "great" things just keep piling up don't they...
*I have a lumia 930, GREAT phone. Until they killed that section of their business.
. Good design would be discrete settings files for each application, including the operating system, which requires them. "
No, that's the worst possible design for security, auditing, consistency, performance, stability and common sense. A single repository designed for the purpose is a far better solution that a zoo of files located all over the place.
a service called "app readiness", which "gets apps ready for use the first time a user signs in to this PC and when adding new apps"
So, is it a pre-compiler for the pre-compiler then? The mind boggles.
I remember the days when a program came as a compiled binary, and didn't need to be created from p-code every time it ran. Curiously, that seemed to be a faster and more stable way of doing things, but progress moves on.
As a matter of course I clean install windows on all new PC's, I'm sick of the crap that manufacturers bundle in - HP - stick your hotkeys where the sun don't shine, and the links to games centre and anything else you think you can try and entice me to spend money on - it wont work.
And before the penguinistas start (and FFS I wish they wouldn't) - I'm happy they are bundled with windows I just don't like crap they bundle on with it.
Sits back and awaits the diatribe from the diarrhoea tribe
...become too true ? ? ?
went fishing in task mgr the other day under both win 7 and win 10 to check on what crappy 'processes' and other crud was clogging up MY machine, unbidden, unbeknownst (in a larger sense), and unwanted...
but it is nearly impossible (without resorting to semi-advanced nerd jiggery-pokery) to eliminate MS crapware i do not want/need... does that not meet the very definition of 'malware' ? ? ? software i don't want/need FORCED on me ? ? ?
like, say, cortana...
grrrr
and ALL kinds of 'update' crap from every piece of crappy s/w which every touched your machine start/restart and install/reinstall no matter how many times you 'disable' it (ha ! a new definition of 'disable'), ESPECIALLY including all the crapware the manufacturer loads...
so, i don't have a botnet infection taking up resources, i don't have russkie hackers using me as a tor gateway to disseminate pro-tee-rump propaganda, i don't have eee-vil AI awakenings trying to kill me; BUT, what i DO have, is an endless stream of OFFICIAL and semi-mandatory 'reminders', 'updates', 'background', zombie tasks and processes going on which i have ZERO use for, but can not be killed dead...
AND, when/if i do have use for them, i can start them up myself, fuck you very much...
gee, hard to wonder why discriminating nerds/users despise Big Computer dictating 'their' hardware/software 'choices'...
I think you remember correctly. I saw an MS Channel 9 video years ago where the guy behind the Registry was asked about his creation. His reply was (and I think I'm quoting verbatim here) "Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry...."
My understanding is that it is an offspring of the Common Data Dictionary used by certain programs under VMS on DEC VAX computers, and came to Microsoft when they hired Mr VMS to develop Windows NT.
The CDD was an enormous file, frequently changed by almost anything and then clogging up the next backup operation.
"The Registry" was originally supposed to replace all of the INI files with something more efficient, but then everything "OLE" began to pollute it. And for some odd reason, Micro-shaft's code appears to act as if it's "paranoid", based on what I've seen in performance measurements. It's like "the Registry" _MUST_ flush and re-read its cache physically from disk, every time something burps. It can't intelligently use a system-wide write-through cache. No, that would make TOO! MUCH! SENSE! and perform TOO! WELL! for Micro-shaft. Instead, it appears that EVERY application that accesses the registry must FLUSH TO DISK and READ FROM DISK, EVERY! SINGLE! TIME!!
(if anyone has proof of the contrary, please let me know; but all of my performance measurements suggests that this is the case and it explains SO many hideous performance problems in Windows, and every version since XP seems to do this, and probably the ones before that as well)
> "The Registry" was originally supposed to replace all of the INI files with something more efficient, but then everything "OLE" began to pollute it
Turn that around - OLE (assuming you want something like OLE, but that is another matter) _needs_ the centralised Registry (for hopefully fairly obvious reasons).
_Then_ people started having the brilliant idea of dropping what was held in INI files into the same place, ensuring that we lose the ability to write comments about _what_ this value is for and _who_ just changed it and _why_ they did and _when_ (ok, so you never bothered with writing those comments but at least you had the opportunity to document your INI file contents).
Funny thing is that there's at least one company that gets money from implementing something really similar to the Windows registry under Linux.
Even funnier is that... HP uses this in the customized Linux they put on their thin clients (I've hacked it much).
"Even funnier is that... HP"
Back in Windows 3 days there was a 3rd party package called New Wave which added a lot of the OO-type click to open with the right application stuff, etc. This, as I recall it, had a heap of little files which presumably did much the same thing as the registry did. A lot of that New Wave stuff got incorporated in W95 as could be seen by the copyright declarations.
The company who provided New Wave?..... You've guessed it.
"It recommended "advanced users" edit the Windows registry keys to delete specific registry keys. There's a sharp warning: "Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly.""
Really? And what is my 84-year old mother supposed to do? She's convinced that she broke her PC trying to use it offline, due, rather appropriately, to it getting messed up by Microsoft 'updates'. She is not what anyone would describe as an IT expert.
I sense a trip to the Apple store in the near future.
THIS time I am going to blame HP; for no other reason than their STUPID custom BIOS.
The HP cpu and case fans in my USFF were too noisy, so I replaced them with expensive QUIET fans, that blow more air, but at a much lower RPM.
HP BIOS doesnt like that, so it SWITCHED THE FANS OFF WITHOUT WARNING, and cooked my cpu.
I laughed.
Microsoft trying to be too clever by half, again.
Also, is it for classic win32 programs, or for those apps you have to download through the Windows Store?
My hunch tells me it's the latter.
"Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly."
I suspect Microsoft, purely in the interests of preventing piracy, specifically designed Windows to go BSOD, if it detects it's been transferred to a new PC. Of course in the process they made Windows unrecoverable in the event of a false positive.
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