The Old New Thing

What’s the difference between GetKeyState and GetAsyncKeyState?

November 30, 2004 Nov 30, 2004 11/30/04

Raymond Chen

I've seen some confusion over the difference between the GetKeyState function and the GetAsyncKeyState function. GetKeyState returns the virtual key state. In other words, GetKeyState reports the state of the keyboard based on the messages you have retrieved from your input queue. This is not the same as the physical keyboard state: ...

Simple things you can do with the ShellExecuteEx function

November 26, 2004 Nov 26, 2004 11/26/04

Raymond Chen

Here's a tiny little program: #include <windows.h> #include <shellapi.h> int __cdecl main(int argc, char **argv) { if (argc == 3) { SHELLEXECUTEINFO sei = { sizeof(sei) }; sei.fMask = SEE_MASK_FLAG_DDEWAIT; sei.nShow = SW_SHOWNORMAL; // added 27 Nov sei.lpVerb = argv[1]; sei.lpFile = argv[2]; ...

Why do folders like “My Pictures” come back after I delete them?

November 23, 2004 Nov 23, 2004 11/23/04

Raymond Chen

Some people are offended by the special folders like "My Pictures" and "My Music" and delete them, only to find them being re-created. What's going on? Windows itself is okay with you deleting those folders. Some corporations, for example, remove those folders from their employees' machines because they don't want the employees looking at ...

The various ways of sending a message

November 19, 2004 Nov 19, 2004 11/19/04

Raymond Chen

There are several variations on the SendMessage function, but some are special cases of others. The simplest version is SendMessage itself, which sends a message and waits indefinitely for the response. The next level up is SendMessageTimeout which sends a message and waits for the response or until a certain amount of time has elapsed...