It seems that Microsoft’s problems are growing day after day and the latest one is a Windows bug that messes up the configuration of the operating system further causing it to crash. Although, the bug is said to have a devastating affect on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 it has not affected Windows 10 so far.
The bug is similar to an age old vulnerability that Microsoft faced during the era when Windows 95 and Windows 98 were widely used. Apparently, the present problem that causes the windows to crash is triggered due to a special file name called ‘$MFT’ (Master File Table). This file appears as a metadata that is used by the NTFS file system.
Reboot page appears when the bug is triggered.
Although, the $MFT file is not visible since the direct view of the file is essentially blocked by Windows, the file can still be accessed with the help of its directory name (eg: file c:\$MFT\123). Now this is where the problem arises! If the $MFT file is accessed, the system would not be able to launch the program as the program launch would fail. Microsoft locks down this file and never releases it further causing all the other operations of the computer waiting for the lock to be released. Such a lock down will block all access to the file system creating a chaos-like scenario in the operating system, further causing programs to hang and not respond. However, the computer would remain unstable until it is rebooted all over again.
Another way this bug can be triggered or provoked is by using a bad filename for an image source of a webpage. Once this webpage is opened browsers such as Internet explorer would access the bad file in the local resources causing Windows to crash. It has also been reported that, browsers such as Google Chrome will block attempts to access these local files.
It has been confirmed by multiple sources that this bug has been detected and reported to Microsoft. However, even though Microsoft is aware of this problem it has not shared any details of the fix so far.