Subject: Re: cygwin reboots my PC randomly
From: Brian Dessent <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 21:27:47 -0800

Marc J wrote:

> I'm running DLL release version is 1.5.10-3 on Windows 2000 Pro and a 1 yr

You should at least use the latest version.

> After I have the cygwin environment up with windowing started via
> startxwin.sh, and a couple of xterm windows up,
> after a random amount of time (several hours, 2 days...), my PC suddenly
> reboots.

First of all: Your question belongs on the Cywin X11 mailing list
(cygwin-xfree AT cygwin DOT com) which is where I've set the Reply-To. 
Please read the instructions on the cygwin.com website before posting.

The problem here is that Cygwin is just a DLL and some applications. 
That is, it runs as a normal user process and does not involve any
device drivers.  Under the NT line of operating systems, a regular user
mode app cannot do anything that would cause the machine to BSOD or
reboot.  I'm not saying that normal apps can't cause BSODs and reboots,
but they are either interfacing with buggy kernel mode (ring 0) drivers
or they are stimulating those drivers in some way so as to cause the
reboot.  Or... you have faulty hardware.  Bad RAM tends to distinguish
itself by causing inexplicable reboots and lockups.

What I'm trying to get at is there really can't be anything in user-mode
code that would directly cause a reboot.  It would have to either
trigger a bug in a kernel mode driver (*cough* video drivers *cough*) or
some other hardware anomaly is at fault.

I realize that it may only happen with Cygwin, but that doesn't mean
it's Cygwin's fault per se... Cygwin may just be tickling some driver or
HW bug.

So the first thing I would recommend is to make sure you have the latest
version of all important kernel mode drivers (video,
motherboard/chipset, sound, etc.)  Then run a comprehensive memory test
such as memtest86 (google it.)

Brian

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