Ever wonder about the physiology of a dying process? How, exactly, does an OS, like Windows Vista for example, know when a process is dying or hung or just out of its mind? What does Vista do, exactly, when it encounters a troubled process?

Well, Kinshuman, a Windows core os dev lead, Cornel Lupu, a Windows core os dev mananger, Jeff Braunstein, a reliability PM, and Siamak Ahari, a reliability test lead, will show you exactly how Windows Vista deals with troubled processes. We also dig into what happens with Dr. Watson data and how Dr. Watson has been improved in Vista. Of course, we spend a good deal of time talking about the complexities of operating system reliability in general. Basically, we have a great conversation about a giant topic.

There are some fundamental architectural changes in how Vista detects and deals with processes that need to be dealt with... You can think of processes as cellular units. In biological systems like you and me, we have powerful regulation mechanisms that deal with cells gone bad. Vista has similar constructs and we dig into them in this interview with some of the folks who built them.