The Unbelievable Tale of Janet Jackson’s ‘Rhythm Nation’ Crashing Laptops: A Tech Throwback
Imagine a pop song so powerful it could crash your computer. Sounds like science fiction? Not quite. The story of Janet Jackson's 'Rhythm Nation' causing Windows laptops to crash is a bizarre but true piece of tech history. Buckle up as we delve into this unexpected intersection of music and hardware.
The legend, as recounted by Microsoft's Raymond Chen, involves a major computer manufacturer discovering that certain frequencies in the 'Rhythm Nation' music video resonated with the 5,400rpm hard drives in some of their laptops. This resonance was strong enough to disrupt the hard drive's operation leading to system crashes. The vulnerability even earned its own entry in the NIST National Vulnerability Database.
The solution? A custom audio filter designed to dampen the offending frequencies. This filter, implemented in Windows XP, remained in place "at least until Windows 7," according to Chen. But the story doesn't end there. Microsoft's push to allow users to disable all audio processing in Windows 7 nearly jeopardized the fix.
One hardware vendor even requested an exception to a new Microsoft rule for Windows 7 because disabling their Audio Processing Object (APO) could result in physical damage to the computer. According to Chen this was because If it were possible to disable their APO, word would get out that “You can get heavier bass if you go through these steps,” and of course you want more bass, right? I mean, who doesn’t want more bass? So people would uncheck the box and enjoy richer bass for a while, and then at some point in the future, the computer would crash mysteriously or (worse) produce incorrect results.
While Chen doesn't know if the exception is still in place today, the good news is that spinning disk hard drives are largely a thing of the past. With the rise of SSDs (Solid State Drives), modern computers are immune to the resonant frequencies. So, feel free to crank up 'Rhythm Nation' without fear of a system meltdown.
While this tale may seem like a quirky historical footnote, it highlights the often-unforeseen ways in which technology and the world around it can interact. The fact that a pop song could have such a dramatic effect on computer hardware is both amusing and a testament to the ingenuity of the engineers who found a solution.
So, next time you're blasting your favorite tunes, remember the saga of 'Rhythm Nation' and the laptops it threatened. And if you have any memories of tech issues caused by unexpected sources, share them in the comments below!