Critical Bug Could Derail Windows 7 Launch
It appears that Microsoft’s glowing track record with Windows 7 is about to come to an abrupt and unceremonious end. According to various Web sources, the RTM build 7600.16385 includes a potentially fatal bug that, once triggered, could bring down the entire OS in a matter of seconds.
The bug in question -- a massive memory leak involving the chkdsk.exe utility -- appears when you attempt to run the program against a secondary (that is, not the boot partition) hard disk using the "/r" (read and verify all file data) parameter. The problem affects both 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and is classified as a "showstopper" in that it can cause the OS to crash (Blue Screen of Death) as it runs out of physical memory.
I tested for the bug against three different Windows 7 OS configurations on two different hardware platforms: an Intel Atom-based netbook running the 32-bit version, an Intel Core 2 Duo notebook running the 64-bit version, and a VMware Workstation 6.5.2 virtual machine running the 32-bit version.
