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by dvhh 5146 days ago
Indeed windows 3.1 provide cooperative multi-tasking instead of our modern preemptive multitasking.

Cooperative : it is up to the current thread/process to give up its CPU usage, meaning that if a thread is stalled the whole system is considered crashed (except for interrupt, which allowed for windows to recover via magic keys ).

Preemptive : The system govern the use of the CPU and arbitrary take CPU usage from the thread/process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_multitasking#Cooper...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preemption_%28computing%29