The Old New Thing

Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.

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Jun 25, 2026
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Raymond’s hot take on Hainanese chicken

Raymond Chen

Subtlety.

Jun 25, 2026
Post comments count 3
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The case of the DLL that was not present in memory despite not being formally unloaded, part 1

Raymond Chen

Figuring out how it went missing.

Jun 24, 2026
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Cancellation of Windows Runtime activities is asynchronous

Raymond Chen

You're asking for it to cancel, but it doesn't wait for confirmation.

Jun 23, 2026
Post comments count 10
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Microspeak elaborated: Isn’t escrow just a release candidate by another name?

Raymond Chen

Yes, but the name is a psychological trick.

Jun 22, 2026
Post comments count 20
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In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

Raymond Chen

Starting in Word and expanding to nearly every other word processor, and even things that aren't word processors.

Jun 19, 2026
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What does it mean when the bottom bit of my HMODULE is set?

Raymond Chen

A special kind of <CODE>HMODULE</CODE>.

Jun 18, 2026
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Why doesn’t Get­Last­Input­Info() return info for the user I’m impersonating?

Raymond Chen

It doesn't care about impersonation, says so on the tin.

Jun 17, 2026
Post comments count 6
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Windows stack limit checking retrospective, follow-up

Raymond Chen

Choosing the register to use to pass the desired stack allocation size.

Jun 16, 2026
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Retrofitting the WM_COPY­DATA message onto Windows 3.1

Raymond Chen

It was carefully designed to be trivial.

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