The Old New Thing

January 2006 - The Old New Thing

Why does the Recycle Bin have different file system names on FAT and NTFS?

January 31, 2006 Jan 31, 2006 01/31/06
Raymond Chen
On FAT drives, the directory that stores files in the Recycle Bin is called C:\RECYCLED, but on NTFS drives, its name is C:\RECYCLER. Why the name change? The FAT and NTFS Recycle Bins have different internal structure because NTFS has this thing called "security" and FAT doesn't. All recycled files on FAT drives are dumped into a single C:\...

Waiting for all handles with MsgWaitForMultipleObjects is a bug waiting to happen

January 27, 2006 Jan 27, 2006 01/27/06
Raymond Chen
The MsgWaitForMultipleObjects and MsgWaitForMultipleObjectsEx functions allow you to specify whether you want to want for any or all of the handles (either by passing bWaitAll = TRUE or by passing dwFlags = MWMO_WAITALL, accordingly). But you never want to wait for all handles. Waiting for all handles means that the call does not return ...
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Stephen Tolouse's reminiscences of Windows 95 RTM day

January 26, 2006 Jan 26, 2006 01/26/06
Raymond Chen
Stephen Tolouse (known around Microsoft as "stepto", pronounced "step-toe") from the Microsoft Security Response Center reminisces about Windows 95 RTM. Stephen mentions that "the build numbers were artificially inflated to reach 950". There's actually a technical reason for this inflation, which I intend to write about when I have the ...

Pumping messages while waiting for a period of time

January 26, 2006 Jan 26, 2006 01/26/06
Raymond Chen
We can use the MsgWaitForMultipleObjects function (or its superset MsgWaitForMultipleObjectsEx) to carry out a non-polling "sleep while processing messages". This function pumps messages for up to dwTimeout milliseconds. The kernel of the idea is merely to use the MsgWaitForMultipleObjects/Ex function as a surrogate for WaitMessageTimeout...
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Welcome to the United States, unless you're a Canadian technologist who is an invited guest at a Microsoft conference, in which case, keep out

January 25, 2006 Jan 25, 2006 01/25/06
Raymond Chen
Vancouver technologist Darren Barefoot was invited to Redmond by the MSN Search team but was stopped by Immigration and denied entry. Ultimately, the customs agents concluded that because Microsoft was covering my flight and accommodation, I was being compensated for consulting activities. In order to enter the country, I'd need a work ...

You can call MsgWaitForMultipleObjects with zero handles

January 25, 2006 Jan 25, 2006 01/25/06
Raymond Chen
There is no WaitMessageTimeout function, but you can create your own with the assistance of the MsgWaitForMultipleObjects function. To wait for a message with timeout, we use the MsgWaitForMultipleObjects in a vacuous sense: You pass it a list of objects you want to wait for, as well as a timeout and a set of queue states, asking that the ...
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