Showing results for November 2010 - Page 2 of 3 - The Old New Thing

Nov 17, 2010
0
0

How full does a hard drive have to get before Explorer will start getting concerned?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

The answer depends on which "hard drive almost full" warning you're talking about. Note that these boundaries are merely the current implementation (up until Windows 7). Future versions of Windows reserve the right to change the thresholds. The information provided is for entertainment purposes only. The thermometer under the drive icon in ...

Tips/Support
Nov 16, 2010
0
0

If you measure something, people will change their behavior to address the measurement and not the thing the measurement is intended to measure

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

We all know that once you start measuring something, people will change the way they behave. We hope that the change is for the better, but that's not always the case, and that's especially true if you are using the metrics as a proxy for something else: People will manipulate the metric without necessarily affecting the thing that your metric is ...

Other
Nov 15, 2010
0
0

The program running in a console decides what appears in that console

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

James Risto asks, "Is there a way to change the behavior of the CMD.EXE window? I would like to add a status line." The use of the phrase "the CMD.EXE window" is ambiguous. James could be referring to the console itself, or he could be referring to the CMD.EXE progarm. The program running in a console decides what appears in the console. If ...

Other
Nov 12, 2010
0
0

Why does the common file dialog change the current directory?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

When you change folders in a common file dialog, the common file dialog calls to match the directory you are viewing. (Don't make me bring back the Nitpicker's Corner.) Okay, the first reaction to this is, "What? I didn't know it did that!" This is the other shoe dropping in the story of the curse of the current directory. Now the question is...

Other
Nov 11, 2010
0
0

Using delayload to detect functionality is a security vulnerability

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

We saw last time that your debugging code can be a security vulnerability when you don't control the current directory. A corollary to this is that your delayload code can also be a security vulnerability, for the same reason. When you use the linker's delayload functionality to defer loading a DLL until the first time it is called, the linker ...

Other
Nov 9, 2010
0
0

The curse of the current directory

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

The current directory is both a convenience and a curse. It's a convenience because it saves you a lot of typing and enables the use of relative paths. It's a curse because of everything else. The root cause of this curse is that the Windows NT family of operating systems keeps open a handle to the process's current directory. (Pre-emptive ...

Other
Nov 5, 2010
0
0

Why does the Win32 Time service require the date to be correct before it will set the time?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Public Service Announcement: Daylight Saving Time ends in most parts of the United States this weekend. Andy points out that if you attempt to synchronize your clock when the date is set incorrectly, the operation fails with the error message "An error occurred while Windows was synchronizing with time.windows.com. For security reasons, Windows ...

Tips/SupportTime
Nov 4, 2010
0
0

The story of MUI, as told by others (with some commentary)

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

First, the story as told by others: Now the question you're all going to ask so I may as well answer it: Why is this information kept in a file instead of being attached to the file itself (say, in an alternate stream)? If it were in an alternate stream, then it would track the file when it was moved or copied. First answer: Because alternate ...

Other