Windows 7 Memory Bug Isn't a Showstopper

Microsoft had signed off the Windows 7 RTM (release to manufacture) build on June 23. However, a fortnight later a memory bug in the Windows 7 RTM build was stamped as a "showstopper" bug and was publicized that it might delay the Windows 7 launch.

The issue was hot on the web yesterday until Steven Sinofsky, president of Windows Division for Microsoft, commented on one of the blogs that the bug wasn't of critical nature.

A blogger Ryan Price blogged that running "CHKDSK /r" in Command Prompt would crash the system or freeze it. As per the steps posted, using that command would shoot up memory consumption by 90 per cent. ZDNet blogger Ed Bott tested Windows 7 RTM for hours to see if the memory bug occurred again. He inferred "that high memory usage is observed in the Chkdsk.exe process if you kick off the disk check from a command prompt".

Sinofsky explained in the comment on Chris' blog that (in chkdsk) the design was to use more memory on purpose to speed things up, but never unbounded - we request the available memory and operate within that leaving at least 50M of physical memory. He also dismissed the label of 'critical bug' stating, "While we appreciate the drama of 'critical bug' and then the pickup of 'showstopper' that I've seen, we might take a step back and realize that this might not have that defcon level." If any showstopper bugs are reported then those will be patched and exhaustively stress tested at the Microsoft's Labs.

This memory bug is said to be chipset specific and might occur on overclocked hardware. The ideal thing to do is not to run CHKDSK from command prompt and update the motherboard as well as CPU drivers to the latest available. The fact is this is not the "showstopper" bug that might derail the Windows 7 launch on October 22.