When you ask somebody to take a look, you need to tell them what you want them to find

Raymond Chen

Here’s a message I received some years ago, paraphrased:

From: X
Subject: FW: Bug 161803: Program Q uses undocumented resource which we changed in Vista

Raymond, can you take a look?

——- Original message ——-
From: Y
Subject: Bug 161803: Program Q uses undocumented resource which we changed in Vista

It appears that Program Q is loading shell32 and looking for a resource that we changed in Vista. It used to be an ordinal resource number 123, but it has since moved to location ABC. The program goes looking for it at the old location and can’t find it, so it barfs.

So what is it exactly that I’m supposed to be looking for? It looks like Y pretty much figured it out. Maybe you want me to move the resource back. Or perhaps you want me to write a compatibility shim. Or verify Y’s analysis?

Turns out that in the case, I was being asked to look for other resources in the shell that moved from one location to another and therefore might be the source of compatibility bugs similar to this.

Raymond Chen

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