Windows update harbors AMD conflict

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To date there are NO conflicts with SP2

other than those caused by programs violating Windows security, and SP2 is finally catching them at it, JUST AS MICROSOFT PROMISED.

In the vast majority of cases, the "problem" is caused by the new firewall. Examples include programs that open their own TCP ports to check to see if another copy of the same program is running on the LAN, with the same serial number, to enforce licensing restrictions (MANY programs do this). The firewall blocks such things, which cause the programs to fail. But ANY firewall worthy of the name (BlockIced Offender need not apply) would do the same thing. You just have to configure an exception in the firewall, and voila! Everything works fine!

This PARTICULAR case, spoken of in this article, is NOT the fault of SP2 nor of AMD, but rather of the driver in the Hollywood ReelMagic DVD Decoder Card. This is a card which few people have and which NOBODY, but **NOBODY**, NEEDS anymore on an AMD64 or Intel Xeon 64 system (the only ones that would crash with it anyway)! The solution HERE is to just YANK OUT THE WORTHLESS CARD AND UNINSTALL ITS DRIVER!

The card USED to have a purpose back in the days of 166MHz-and-slower pre-MMX Pentiums and even slower 486s. Those CPUs didn't have the "oomph" needed to decode MPEG2 (DVD) video on-the-fly, in real time. So Hollywood made a co-processor card that added a special CPU-like chip (DSP) that took much of the MPEG2-decoding load off of the CPU. NO MODERN CPU NEEDS SUCH HELP ANYMORE! Even a 333MHz Pentium MMX could handle DVD-decoding with the aid of an ordinary everyday Windows-accelerator video card (as all video cards have been for over a decade now), and modern CPUs with speeds in the GHz range don't even need THAT help!

The REASON that the driver crashes on these systems is because it uses the same ILLEGAL technique that most MALWARE uses (namely, trying to execute code in an area of memory allocated for non-executable data storage -- this is what makes "buffer overflows" so dangerous [read the descriptions of most of those Critical Updates you have to download for Windows -- the VAST majority address buffer overflows!]). The AMD64 and new Intel Xeon64s both have new flag bits in the CPU registers that allow memory to be marked as Do Not Allow Code to Execute Here, and XP SP2 now looks at that bit and ENFORCES it. This stops ALL such buffer overflows from working, WITHOUT having to come out with dozens of Critical Updates to address each specific buffer overflow separately, as past OSes had to do.

The ReelMagic driver tries to execute code in a Do Not Execute memory block, so the AMD64 CPU and SP2 together treat it as malware and stop it from running! THIS IS WHAT THEY ARE **SUPPOSED** TO DO! It is NOT a flaw in ANYTHING but the DRIVER! Not the CPU, not the Service Pack 2, not the Windows XP OS!

Posted by: Joel R   Posted on: 09/08/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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