The Old New Thing

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

When you start getting in-page errors on your hard drive, it’s time to go shopping for a new hard drive

December 4, 2008 Dec 4, 2008 12/4/08
Raymond Chen
The describes itself as "The instruction at XXX referenced memory at YYY. The required data was not placed into memory because of an I/O error status of ZZZ." What does this mean? It means that the memory manager needed to read some memory from the disk, but the disk returned an error. (Namely, error ZZZ.) Since it has no way to return an ...

High Contrast Mode is not the same as High Contrast Scheme

December 3, 2008 Dec 3, 2008 12/3/08
Raymond Chen
"High Contrast Mode" is an accessibility state controlled by the flag in the member of the structure. You can retrieve this structure programmatically by calling the function with the parameter; conversely, you update the setting programmatically with parameter. Programs are on their honor to query the "High Contrast Mode" flag and, if ...

That guy in the neighborhood who has way too many Christmas lights

December 2, 2008 Dec 2, 2008 12/2/08
Raymond Chen
Weekend America profiles Dominic Luberto, that guy with his house so covered in Christmas lights that you're sure it's a fire hazard or something. I like how he pulls out the classic argument stopper when challenged that his display is too much. "Whoever comes against me - listen - goes against the kids." There you go. In the United States...

Raymond’s technique for getting people to leave a meeting room when their meeting runs over

December 2, 2008 Dec 2, 2008 12/2/08
Raymond Chen
It's certainly common at Microsoft, and probably common at many places, that a meeting runs over. The next group who has booked the room gathers outside waiting for the previous meeting to wrap up. Sometimes they wait timidly outside the door, and the group inside never realizes that they are running over. Late meetings have a cascade effect ...