The Old New Thing

A common control for associating extensions is well overdue

Mark complained that a common control for associating extensions is well overdue. This is a recurring theme I see in the comments: People complaining that Windows lacks some critical feature that it in fact already has. (In the case, Windows had the feature for over two years at the time the question was asked. Maybe the SDK needs a ribbon? ...

Why are the building numbers on Microsoft main campus so erratic?

Carrie complains that the building numbers on Microsoft main campus are completely random. Why is building 22 near buildings 40 and 41, far, far away from building 24? Because the Microsoft campus evolved. Many many years ago, the space on which the central Microsoft campus resides was a mill. Eventually it became an office park, and when ...

Is this a really bug with CreateWindowEx or am I just confused?

Somebody sent me email pointing out strange behavior in the function if you fail a window creation by returning −1 from the message. On the other hand, returning from seems to work just fine. "So why the difference with ?" You already know enough to solve this puzzle. You just need to connect the dots. (In fact, the person who ...

Why doesn't the Disk Management snap-in incorporate S.M.A.R.T. data?

My article a while back on Why the Disk Management snap-in reports my volume as Healthy when the drive is dying gave the low-level explanation of why the Disk Management snap-in does not incorporate SMART information: because the Disk Management snap-in is concerned with volume partitioning. DWalker59 noted that the use of the word "Healthy...

Why is the registry a hierarchical database instead of a relational one?

Commenter ton asks why the registry was defined as a hierarchical database instead of a relational database. Heck, it's not even a hierarchical database! The original registry was just a dictionary; i.e., a list of name/value pairs, accessed by name. In other words, it was a flat database. If you turned your head sideways and treated ...

Thanks for letting me know what my ideal career and company are

When it's performance review season, all of a sudden you start getting mail about career management. What a coincidence. There are a variety of career management tools available, some mandatory, some optional. I gave one of the optional ones a shot, since it claimed to help me "manage my career and professional development", and as I already ...