INFO: Interrupting Threads in Critical Sections

ID: Q101193

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Win32 Application Programming Interface (API), used with:
- Microsoft Windows NT, versions 3.1, 3.5, 3.51
- Microsoft Windows 95

If a thread enters a critical section and then terminates abnormally, the critical section object will not be released. Many components of the C Run-time library are not reentrant and use a resource locking scheme to maintain coherency in the multithreaded environment. Thus, a thread that has entered a C Run-time function, such as printf(), could deadlock all access (within that process) to printf() if it terminates abnormally.

This situation could arise if a thread is terminated with TerminateThread() while it holds a resource lock. If this occurs, any thread that tries to acquire that resource lock will become deadlocked.

SUMMARY

Additional query words: 3.10 3.50 4.00

Keywords :
Version : winnt:3.1,3.5,3.51
Platform : winnt
Issue type : kbinfo