As Microsoft continues to push out buggy Windows 11 updates, our colleagues at Windows Central recall the rather comical story of a programming error in Windows 7 that caused the startup time to increase by 30 seconds when the user chose a wallpaper color.
Unintentional removal of Copilot, useless April update to combat persistent bugs, Windows 11 update blocked in the enterprise… some will call it negligence, but it is clear that Microsoft has a knack for leaving annoying bugs in its software code quite often. In the company's defense, Windows 11 must adapt to a wide variety of PCs, which makes development particularly complicated.
But... there have been less glorious times than others in this area. Our colleagues recount how an error in the Windows 7 code resulted in an extra 30 seconds at startup when the user chose a color instead of a background image. Users of the version were indeed noticing loading times that varied greatly and unpredictably.
We finally know why Windows 7 sometimes took longer to start
Today, a developer at the firm, Raymond Chen, explains that this behavior was linked to a rather unfortunate programming error in the code. In fact, the operating system performed a series of checks when the welcome screen appeared. Each graphical component of the interface had to return an appropriate error code before this screen would disappear.
He explains:“Thelogon system waited for all elements to signal that they were ready. Once all elements had given the green light, or a 30-second delay had elapsed, the system would exit the welcome screen. Given this design, it's easy to understand the reason for the 30-second delay on some startups: it meant that one of the elements hadn't signaled that it was ready.”
The connection with the wallpaper, you might say? Simple: the way the logon routine was coded didn't allow the user to choose a color instead of a background image. Resulting in an error that caused an additional 30 seconds of delay. The problem also occurred if the user enabled the system policy that was supposed to hide desktop icons. It took Microsoft five months to realize the problem and fix it with an update in November 2009.
0 Comments