name='nrage' said:
The answer is probably that windows is a POS.
What are you stress testing exactly?
Well that could be one answer, but another also is down to bad programming and practices.
In a perfect world, with a perfect OS and perfect 3rd part software (games/drivers/apps) - u should be able to leave a computer on for a week and it will run as well after a week as it did when it started up. Similar to how older computers used to work.
But as time moves on, u have an OS with 50million different sub routines - not only are all the routines not 100% compatible with each other, but they`re also dependant on each other in some way, a good handfull of them are frankly thrown together, some still exist from the original OS framework from 20 years ago, without change. All u need is a group of these little routines to either fail without telling any1 or not deallocate some memory it`s used for something, and the OS doesn`t fail as a whole (in most occasions), it just sits there letting u think everything is ok. Stuff is failing all over the place and u know nothing about it. U could go as far as saying the best install and the best moment of use, is when as little as possible is failing and the least of the bad memory managing routines have had a chance to run.
That aside, u startup u`r machine, and at this point it`s usually running the OS as good as u`r gonna get it.
Soon as u execute something, something will go astray. (unless it`s something like some C++ u`ve written u`rself and obeyed all the rules, even then, procedures u may call upon could be flawed themselves in some way - so maybe u`r in a no-win situation)
U run dozens of apps, games, utils, each one of them can add to the above. Maybe in a really small way, but they all add up, and then u run them again and the snowball gets bigger.
Anywho, that`s just a big generalization of where we are today, in u`r personal case, it`d be handy to have an idea of what processes and resources u have before running the game - quit - then see what u got afterwards.
Easy answer is re-install this`n`that, add a patch - meh.
