ME is... not comparable? There's no security boundaries ME could implement- it was still DOS and fat32.

The list of changes Vista made were never going to go off without a hitch. When you put new boundaries in place in the kernel, and a driver violates them because it was recompiled not updated to handle a separation and handle errors from it: there's no choice but to Kernel Panic.

Compatibility Shims were introduced for userland changes.

Despite the hate, DWM handled the most frequent crashes: graphics.

Microsoft is STILL working on pulling graphics code out of the kernel and into userland.