povray.org admin team wrote:
> 
> An app (presuming it's a user-level app) cannot (to my knowledge) induce a stop
> (i.e. bugcheck). Only a faulty kernel-mode component (i.e. ring 0) can do this.
> 
> This generally means a bug in a device driver. It is possible, of course, for
> an app to induce a bugcheck (AKA BSOD, the 'Blue Screen Of Death') if it is
> communicating with a device driver in such a way as to flush the bug out. Also,
> some apps come with their own kernel-mode drivers (though this is uncommon).
> However, the same principle applies there - the bug is in the device driver.

Just as another data point...

I've been running NT (3.51 and 4.0) for about four years, on several
different boxes, using it for intensive development work as well as many
other applications (including POV-Ray) (not counting editors and web
browsers, the program I run most often is probably EGCS). In all that
time, I've had exactly three system crashes (and one of those was under
an early beta of NT4, so I don't think it's fair to count it), plus two
occasions when the OS was malfunctioning badly enough that I rebooted to
fix it. My record for contnuous up time is about two months. (The usual
reason for rebooting is badly written installers that insist on a
restart.)

So don't take those "blue screen of death" tales too seriously. Yeah, it
happens, but an average of one system crash per year is good enough for
me.

-- 
Ross Smith ..................................... Wellington, New Zealand
<mailto:r-s### [at] ihugconz> ........ <http://crash.ihug.co.nz/~r-smith/>
   "Remember when we told you there was no future? Well, this is it."
                                                         -- Blank Reg

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