[Dalewyn]

>It was normal for computers to auto-login and have no password at all, processes could each read entire memory on the machine.

To be fair, this is specifically to do with personal computers of the time; MS-DOS, Windows 3x, and Windows 9x were all single user operating systems: They simply had no concept of multiple users at all. The concept was bolted on later as an afterthought, but it was really janky and paled in usability and security to proper multi user environments like that seen in Windows NT.

Incidentally, this lack of understanding multi users is also why it's a royal pain in the arcane arse to join a Windows 3x or 9x machine to a Windows NT network. A network is fundamentally a multi user environment, something Windows 3x and 9x don't understand.

As for memory access, this too was simply a thing of the times. MS-DOS, Windows 3x, and Windows 9x all simply did not have the concept of segregating and securing memory access between kernel and userland and between each process. All the BSODs that traumatized us back then stemmed from this architecture, and the BSODs quickly diminished once Windows NT became mainstream because the NT kernel operated on the concept of segregated and secured memory access for better security and reliability.

[consp]

I distinctly remember having lots BSODs with IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL errors due to shoddy drivers all the time on XP (which is the first consumer NT kernel windows version), especially in the early days. Maybe not related to shared memory but overall not great either.

[J-Kuhn]

Things got better with newer windows versions.

* Userland printer drivers (that don't bring down the machine if they have a bug)

* Mandatory driver signing...

Nowadays I can run my machine 24/7 without any crashes. Which would be unthinkable back in the day.

[ornornor]

Back in the day, your uptime was a source of pride. So much so that I remember using samurize to display my PC’s uptime right in the desktop… my Linux workstation of today isn’t impressed at all.

[Borg3]

12:50:37 up 1224 days, 53 min, 6 users, load average: 0.00, 0.03, 0.00

Not desktop tho, my home router/server :)

[Borg3]

Are you sure it was drivers issue? Not HW fault? I have good memories of Win2003 (and XP too) Very stable system, if drivers are correctly written.

Back in the days I remember fighting with random BSODs on Audio play/stop on Win2003. After months of fights I nailed that bloody .sys audio driver that gave me the problems. Found orginal vendor simpler driver and problem went away.

[nunez]

Same thing happened after Windows Vista came out. Vista came with a new audio stack that many sound card drivers were not compatible with out the gate.

[tengwar2]

Multi-user seems to have been something which was dropped when MS/DOS was CP/M inspired by CP/M. CP/M (and I do mean CP/M, not just MP/M) had the concept of user areas. These were a different concept from Unix users: there were 16 user areas numbered 0..15, and one could change between them with the USER command. I believe that user area 0 was in some sense shared, possibly only as a place to load .COM files from. There was no security boundary: it was just an organisational tool.