An unusual quirk with Janet Jackson's 'Rhythm Nation' music video involves certain laptops crashing when the song plays nearby. Microsoft employee Raymond Chen revealed that a filter implemented to mitigate this issue remained in place until at least Windows 7. The problem arose from certain frequencies resonating with the hard drives of laptops from a major manufacturer, which led to the creation of a custom audio filter. A hardware vendor later sought an exception to a rule on disabling audio processing due to concerns about potential physical damage to their devices.
Longtime Verge readers might recall the unusual story of how the music video for a Janet Jackson song, 'Rhythm Nation,' could cause certain Windows laptops to crash just by being around when it's playing.
In 2022, Chen wrote a pair of posts relaying a Microsoft colleague's story about how an unnamed 'major computer manufacturer' had to create a custom filter for audio playback after finding that certain frequencies in the video resonated with its laptops' hard drives.
The issue even got its own entry in the NIST National Vulnerability Database, which says it affected 5,400rpm hard drives for certain machines 'in approximately 2005 and later.'
Chen writes that after Microsoft introduced a new rule for Windows 7, a hardware vendor asked for an exception, claiming that disabling their APO could lead to physical damage to the computer.
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