## The Curious Case of Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” and the Windows Laptop Crashes That Lasted for Years
For years, a hidden threat lurked within Janet Jackson’s iconic “Rhythm Nation” music video, one that had the power to bring certain Windows laptops to their knees. The strange phenomenon, where the song’s frequencies resonated with specific hard drives and caused crashes, required a long-term solution. Now, a Microsoft employee has revealed that a filter designed to mitigate this issue remained in place until at least Windows 7.
The story, initially reported in 2022, detailed how a major computer manufacturer discovered that specific frequencies in the “Rhythm Nation” video could induce resonance in their laptops’ 5400rpm hard drives. This resonance disrupted the hard drive’s operation, leading to system crashes. The issue was serious enough to warrant a CVE entry in the NIST National Vulnerability Database.
Raymond Chen, a Microsoft employee, recently shed light on the longevity of the fix. After Microsoft mandated that users be able to disable all audio processing on Windows 7 computers, a hardware vendor requested an exception. Disabling the audio processing object (APO), the vendor argued, could lead to physical damage.
Chen explained the reasoning: “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.”
The potential for users to deliberately disable the filter in pursuit of enhanced bass and, subsequently, inadvertently trigger the crashes, led to the exception being granted. The “Rhythm Nation” safeguard remained active, quietly protecting laptops from sonic sabotage.
While it’s unclear whether the filter is still in place today, the prevalence of solid-state drives (SSDs) has largely rendered the issue moot. Modern computers, devoid of the vulnerable spinning disk hard drives, are unlikely to succumb to the sonic assault of “Rhythm Nation.”
So, feel free to crank up the volume and enjoy the classic track. The days of Janet Jackson’s music causing widespread laptop meltdowns are, thankfully, a thing of the past.
**(YouTube Video of “Rhythm Nation” embedded here)**
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