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From: darkness@altger.UUCP (Stefan Willmeroth)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms.programmer
Subject: GP-Violation and Application Shutdown
Summary: How about Windows being fault tolerant?
Keywords: Protected mode, Windows, GP-Violation
Message-ID: <192@altger.UUCP>
Date: 5 Nov 90 20:46:12 GMT
Organization: ACI Consulting GmbH
Lines: 30

Hi fellow Windows-Programmers.

Some days ago when my Excel 2.1c was killed apruptly with an unrecoverable
application error I wondered if this would be the only way to deal with
an GP-Fault. I dont know exactly about the rules and tricks of protected
mode, but as far as I remember those GP-violations mostly result when an
application adresses an undefined memory location or loads an invalid
descriptor into a segment register. Why cant Windows tolerate those faults
and map some unused bytes to the referred adress instead of shutting down
the application and deleting the users work? The scheme of protected mode
seems rather ridicolous to me since an application is allowed to trash
another applications data without being shut down.
In the case of modifying code segments a shutdown may remain the best
way, but for simple memory-problems it seems overkill to me.

So let the debug-version of Windows complain and the retail version be
tolerant. If the program is too buggy, it will crash the system after all.

Now... can such thing be implemented by changing a driver or device?


Greetings
Stefan Willmeroth


-- 
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Stefan Willmeroth           |Write a program  even  idiots can use,
Munich/Germany              |and you will see that only idiots will
darkness@salyko.doit.sub.org|want to use it.               (Murphy)