A music video caused Windows systems to suddenly crash a few years ago. The problem could be solved with a code that circumvented the issue. Even under Windows 7, the “trick” was still integrated into the system.
Which song is it? Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” has gained some fame among older Windows users.
A manufacturer complained at the time that playing Janet Jackson’s music video crashed some of their laptops. In a further investigation by Microsoft, it was found not only that competing products were also affected, but there was another issue: Playing the music video on one laptop led to the crash of a nearby laptop, even though that other laptop was not playing the video.
The song contains the same frequencies as the hard drive model installed
What exactly was the problem? Raymond Chen, a long-time developer at Microsoft, explained at the time in a blog post that the problem was a specific frequency of the song. The team found during an investigation that the song contained one of the natural resonance frequencies for the model of laptop hard drives operating at 5400 RPM used by them and other manufacturers. This then caused a system crash.
The hard drive itself, however, continued to function perfectly well, as the developer explains. The functionality of the hard drive is only momentarily interrupted (via devblogs.microsoft.com):
Note that the disruption from the eigen resonance frequency does not cause the hard drive to crash, as some media incorrectly reported. It merely interrupts the proper functioning of the hard drive long enough to cause the operating system to crash. If, for example, a kernel page-in I/O operation fails, this would be considered a serious system error. The damage is likely not permanent.
The persistent disruption was enough to cause a critical I/O operation to fail, but removing the audio source resolves the disruption, and the drive works normally again.
How was the problem solved? The problem was circumvented by inserting a custom filter that detected and removed the disruptive frequencies during audio playback. This way, a system crash was cost-effectively prevented. An alternative would have been a structural change within the hard drive.
The custom filter was even used under Windows 7, Raymond Chen explained in another blog post on microsoft.com. Because under Windows 7, a new regulation was introduced that provided the ability to turn off the custom code.
In 1995, Microsoft released a software package for Windows 3.1. The software named “Bob” was intended to serve as a replacement for the graphical interface and to make it easier for inexperienced PC users to access Windows and computers. For years, the failed software nonetheless hid within Windows XP: Microsoft hid its biggest failure in millions of legal copies of Windows XP for years
