windows_7_acid_trip

Not everything is all good and cheery in Windows 7 land.  I like others have downloaded the leaked Windows 7 RC and installed it on my primary machine so I could get the full effect of it.  During this process I did something that I had never done before with a Windows 7 beta, turn on the wallpaper shuffling.

After the install I needed to wait for Windows Update to download an updated video driver for my Asus G1sn laptop.  Once that was completed I installed Opera and Gtalk, with only 2 programs this makes it a very lightly used operating system.  I decided to wait and not customize the operating system like I normally do just so that I could get the “End user experience”.

The only thing that I changed system settings wise was the desktop resolution and I decided to check out one of the new Themes that looked like someone was doing acid when they designed it.  With these themes you can now choose to cycle the wallpapers at a time interval.  I selected the crazy wallpapers and then left it to cycle them every 30 minutes.

A curious thing then started to happen where at exactly 60 minute intervals my computer would lockup for 3 minutes.  At exactly 1:59, 2:59, 3:59 etc. the hard drive light would be fully lighted (very rare for this machine) and every application locks up.  If I waited for the computer to finish it would be on average about 3 minutes before it would recuperate and show a different wallpaper.  Process Explorer and other utilities also lockup.  If I attempt to kill a process (no matter which process) that application also then locks up.

To verify that this was in fact the cause of the lockups, I selected only one wallpaper.  Without multiple wallpapers selected I no longer experienced any problems.  If I revert the settings to cycle the wallpapers again I get the lockups.  The only exception to the 60 minute rule would be if I let the computer go into sleep mode or hibernation, then it would lockup at the next wallpaper change.

Both Windows Vista and Windows 7 have excellent process management and it is almost impossible to get them to lock up in this way.  I have seen Vista machines with thousands of pieces of malware on them and yet they do not exhibit this type of lockup.

Microsoft has been implying if not outright stating that this will be the only Release Candidate.  Hopefully they are not shy of repairing bugs like this before it’s release or they will have some very unhappy customers.

UPDATE:: Several people have been trying to replicate this issue and so far been unsuccessful.  I have updated other drivers and changed multiple settings with only a single change in the symptoms.  Exactly 30 minutes after a change in settings and a reboot the system locks up.  It is still for 3 minutes but is no longer at 60 minute intervals or at the 59 minute mark.  Tomorrow I will be doing a format/reinstall in an attempt to try and track this down.