1 / 15

Why PCs Are Fragile and What We Can Do About It: A Study of Windows Registry Problems

Why PCs Are Fragile and What We Can Do About It: A Study of Windows Registry Problems. Archana Ganapathi Yi-Min Wang Ni Lao Ji-Rong Wen UC-Berkeley and Microsoft Research. Presented by Chao Liu. Windows Registry.

sema
Download Presentation

Why PCs Are Fragile and What We Can Do About It: A Study of Windows Registry Problems

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Why PCs Are Fragile and What We Can Do About It: A Study of Windows Registry Problems Archana Ganapathi Yi-Min Wang Ni Lao Ji-Rong Wen UC-Berkeley and Microsoft Research Presented by Chao Liu

  2. Windows Registry • A centralhierarchical database … used to store information necessary to configure the system for one or more users, applications and hardware devices.-- MS Computer Dictionary, 5th Ed.

  3. What is inside the Windows Registry • Reference data for Windows operation • profiles for each user • the applications installed on the computer • the types of documents that each application can create • property settings for folders and application icons • what hardware exists on the system • the ports that are being used • …

  4. Why Is Windows Registry Blamed? • Complicated in itself • All-round information of the whole system • Undocumented • Little controlled access • Undisciplined usage • Undisciplined users • Customization or messing things up? • Sharing of configuration data • Broken data dependencies

  5. Motivation • Errors in Windows registry are the major source of user dissatisfaction and frustration. • Before actually trying to eliminate the errors, we need to examine their symptoms in detail. • By categorizing them, we hope each sub-problem can be effectively handled by corresponding approaches.

  6. What’s ahead? • Brief overview of data sets • Categorization of registry problems • What we can do about PC fragility • Discussions

  7. Fragility Data Set • Text-mined Data set (TMDS) from PSS • 100 common registry problems from Product Support Services (PSS) email logs. • Zipf-like distribution is almost expected • like English word frequencies and website popularity. • Strider-Verified Data Set (SVDS) • 100 problems collected from colleagues and web forums. • Use Strider to identify root causes.

  8. Outline • Brief overview of datasets • Categorization of registry problems • What we can do about PC fragility • Discussions

  9. Registry Configuration Problems • Problem Manifestation • Unstable/unusable system • ok, time to re-install. • Cannot perform function • Why can’t I send an email? • Unanticipated response • That’s not what I want! • Unanticipated side-effect • Did I ever set this up? • Cannot locate UI • Where is the menu for *** ? • UI disappear, functionality OK • Unintuitive automation • Changing the leading words to capitals?

  10. Manifestation Breakdown • Major source of user frustration • Sense of losing control

  11. Categorization by Scope of Impact • Mis-configurations tend to affect the entire system, not like *nix. • Call for Efforts from both application and OS parts

  12. Outline • Brief overview of datasets • Categorization of registry problems • What we can do about PC fragility • Discussions

  13. What We Can Do About Fragility • Monitoring techniques • For existing applications running on a released OS platform • Rule-based monitoring • Fault injection approach • For application under development, verify its immunity to known problems • Registry entry insertion, deletion and mutation • Access Protection Mechanisms • For designing a new operating system • OS enforces privileges: locking, rule-checking …

  14. Outline • Brief overview of datasets • Why PCs are fragile • What we can do about PC fragility • Discussions

  15. Discussions • Contributions • Categorization of Windows registry related configuration problems • based on real-world data • from both manifestation and scope of impact two point of view • together with analysis based on breakdown tables • A great number of real configuration problems rooted at Windows registry • Three possible approaches proposed conceptually (applicability?) • More … • Impact of this paper • Can the result go beyond the Windows OS? • How, and to what extent, does the result of this paper help the future research?

More Related