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USENIX, The Advanced Computing Systems Association

LISA '06 Abstract

Pp. 149–159 of the Proceedings

Windows XP Kernel Crash Analysis

Archana Ganapathi, Viji Ganapathi, and David Patterson, University of California, Berkeley

Abstract

PC users have started viewing crashes as a fact of life rather than a problem. To improve operating system dependability, systems designers and programmers must analyze and understand failure data. In this paper, we analyze Windows XP kernel crash data collected from a population of volunteers who contribute to the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) project. We found that OS crashes are predominantly caused by poorly-written device driver code. Users as well as product developers will benefit from understanding the crash behaviors elaborated in this paper.
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Last changed: 19 April 2007 ac