Yes, that's exactly what the title says. No, I'm not under the influence of any chemical. We all want our computers to work well and errors to be a thing of the past, but there are isolated times when we need to evaluate a system's behavior and... make it stumble, so to speak. That's when Not My Fault appears. It's an official Microsoft tool under its Sysinternals division, so the origin is safe... although you already know what will happen if you use it.
Expect the best, and prepare for the worst. That expression is pessimistic for some but reasonable for others. Let's apply it to software. Every developer knows that sooner or later their software will experience an error, whether from an internal problem or an external agent (human factor, malware, etc.). Believe it or not, generating and recognizing errors is good training, as long as it's done in a controlled environment. Now let's take that to Windows.
Many of our readers might think: "Windows doesn't need help generating errors", and unfortunately they'd be right, because beyond appearances, Windows is huge, and many of its components can fail. Simulating and studying its errors "prepares for the worst", letting us recognize the subtleties between one problem and another and analyze their effects.
Simulating
Is there a tool for that? The answer is yes, and it's called Not My Fault. Its creator is none other than Mark Russinovich, the mastermind behind Microsoft's Sysinternals section, who also develops other gems like Autoruns and the fabulous Process Explorer.
Not My Fault divides its... functions into three categories: Crash, Hang, and Leak.
- Crash – Essentially, the options under the tab should induce blue screens. IRQL faults (whether in kernel mode or user mode), buffer or stack overflows, and "double free" errors stand out.
- Hang – Offers three modes: one that hangs the system (DPC error), and two that do the same to the program (IRP and Deadlock).
- Leak – Generates memory leaks, paged or non-paged. Choose the size in kilobytes per second, and that's it.
Not My Fault has the potential to earn a smile or two simply because we are the ones causing the errors. However, I'm telling you in all sincerity: It is not a toy, don't use it on critical systems, and please don't make anyone angry. Some may not find valid reasons for this software to exist, but it's available for free, and it works on Windows Vista and later.
