The Old New Thing

January 2008 - Page 4 of 4 - The Old New Thing

What does it mean when a display change is temporary?

January 4, 2008 Jan 4, 2008 01/4/08
Raymond Chen
When you call the function, you can pass the flag to indicate that the change is temporary. But if you don't also save the changes in the registry, how can they be permanent? What does temporary mean? A temporary display change is one that your program has entered because it has gone into a fullscreen mode, a change which it will undo when ...

In steady state, only geeks install Windows, but the hard part is getting to that steady state

January 3, 2008 Jan 3, 2008 01/3/08
Raymond Chen
Commenter BryanK notes that only already-technical people (re)install Windows; commenter Stu estimates the percentage at 99%. That may be true in the steady state, but the hard part is getting to that steady state. When a new version of Windows is released, the steady state is disrupted. At that point, most people installing Windows aren't ...

A new DUI record set in the state of Washington

January 2, 2008 Jan 2, 2008 01/2/08
Raymond Chen
In case you missed it, a former Seattle police detective was arrested in early 2007 for driving with a state record high blood-alcohol level of 0.47 percent. (The legal limit is 0.08 percent, most people black out at 0.35 percent, and 0.40 percent is lethal for 50% of adults.) She was subsequently arrested and held on $250,000 bail (story ...

You know the answer: Window destruction

January 2, 2008 Jan 2, 2008 01/2/08
Raymond Chen
The following request for assistance came in from a customer, and given what you know about window destruction, you should eventually be able to figure it out yourself once all the pieces are in place, though it takes some time for all the clues to be revealed. We are hitting this exception in our program. This is urgent; please give it ...

Fact of life: People can't see things that are right in front of them

January 1, 2008 Jan 1, 2008 01/1/08
Raymond Chen
A bug report came in: When I go to the Power Options control panel and select Edit Plan Settings, the Turn off display combo-box is disabled. Is this a bug? Shortly thereafter, this response was submitted: Do you see a big yellow warning over the Turn off display that says that some settings are managed by your system administrator, and a ...