The Old New Thing

Why are kernel HANDLEs always a multiple of four?

January 21, 2005 Jan 21, 2005 01/21/05

Raymond Chen

Not very well known is that the bottom two bits of kernel HANDLEs are always zero; in other words, their numeric value is always a multiple of 4. Note that this applies only to kernel HANDLEs; it does not apply to pseudo-handles or to any other type of handle (USER handles, GDI handles, multimedia handles...) Kernel handles are things you ...