Gates: Crashes And Hacks Foil WindowsGates: Crashes And Hacks Foil Windows

SEATTLE--Microsoft's studies of Windows downtime show that about 1% of software defects causes half of PC crashes, chairman Bill Gates told PC hardware engineers Thursday. In addition, security problems help keep users from buying Windows servers as widely as PCs, he said.

"We all know that the system over a period of weeks or months doesn't have the kind of reliability we'd like to have," Gates said at Microsoft's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference. Unreliable systems can keep computer users from conducting business or sharing files over the Internet, he said. "The idea of doing E-business in this rich way with Web services--people will be very reluctant to do that if the reliability and trust of these systems isn't very high."

On the server side, computer viruses and security breaches of Windows machines could keep PC servers from overtaking Unix systems as a "common-sense" architecture for running apps, Gates said. Desktop PCs can now outperform Unix workstations at comparable prices, leading more software vendors to write apps for PCs first. "That same thing has taken a bit longer to happen on the server."

Windows XP, Microsoft's latest PC operating system, includes the ability for users to electronically report the causes of software crashes to the company. That facility, combined with the Windows Update electronic patch distributor in the operating system, can give Microsoft "a complete loop" to find and fix problems. Microsoft is also building software tools that can verify drivers to make sure they don't cause problems.

Other factors that prevent Windows servers from becoming as ubiquitous as PCs are slower-than-expected adoption of broadband Internet connections and latency of networks and disks. "We need to be more intelligent about bringing things across the network and caching them," Gates said. "We need to continue to use the intelligence of the device that's near the user."