Memory Leak Reported After Windows 7 RTM Released

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It's official. Microsoft Windows 7 has been released to manufacturing. Just a day later, rumors are rampant about a showstopper bug that could threaten the success of Microsoft's all-important Vista successor.

Microsoft released Windows 7 Release to Manufacturing (RTM) to MSDN and TechNet subscribers Thursday in English. Microsoft also released the RTM version of the Windows API Code Pack for the .NET framework and the Windows 7 SDK that allows developers to update their applications and run compatibility testing with the new version.

The Windows 7 Training Kit for Developers has been updated. It includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos designed to help developers learn how to build applications that shine on Windows 7. The company made the latest iteration of its operating system available to volume-license customers with an existing software assurance license on Friday.

The Showstopper

After a poor showing with Vista, the tech industry is eagerly anticipating Windows 7. But technology researchers claim to have found a bug in the new operating system that causes a massive memory leak and could cause the company to delay the final release. The Chris123NT blog posted directions to execute a crash on Monday.

Microsoft Windows Division President Steven Sinofsky quickly jumped into the blog comment fray, noting that the company hasn't reproduced the crash and is not seeing any crashes with chkdsk on the stack reported in any measurable number. Sinofsky said Microsoft had one beta report on the memory usage, but that was resolved by design.

"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," Sinofsky wrote. "Bugs that are so severe as to require immediate patches and attention would have to have no workarounds and would generally be such that a large set of people would run across them in the normal course of using their PC."

Premature Reviews?

Michael Gartenberg, a vice president at Interpret, said if Microsoft can reproduce the crash, Microsoft will offer a quick fix. However, he noted, Windows 7 has not been released to end users and any claims of a showstopper are premature. If there is a problem, he said, Microsoft has plenty of time to address it before the Oct. 22 launch.

"The Windows 7 software is declared finished and has been released to developers and manufacturers, but it has not been designed to be released to end users yet, perhaps just in case something comes up late in the process that needs to be fixed," Gartenberg said. "You want to test the versions of the software that have been released in final format for general availability, not the RTM versions that go to developers."

If anything, Gartenberg said, the showstopper drama underscores that we are living in a world that moves on Internet time and Internet speed. Five minutes after Microsoft says Windows 7 is done, he noted, the first bloggers are already reviewing it and the first users are already reporting problems.