Showing results for September 2012 - Page 3 of 3 - The Old New Thing

Sep 10, 2012
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When you transfer control across stack frames, all the frames in between need to be in on the joke

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Chris Hill suggests discussing the use of structured exception handling as it relates to the window manager, and specifically the implications for applications which raise exceptions from a callback. If you plan on raising an exception and handling it in a function higher up the stack, all the stack frames in between need to be be in on your li...

Code
Sep 7, 2012
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The case of the asynchronous copy and delete

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

A customer reported some strange behavior in the and functions. They were able to reduce the problem to a simple test program, which went like this (pseudocode): When they ran the program, they found that sometimes the copy failed on the first try with error 5 () but if they waited a second and tried again, it succeeded. Similarly, somet...

Other
Sep 6, 2012
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You can't rule out a total breakdown of normal functioning, because a total breakdown of normal functioning could manifest itself as anything

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

A customer was attempting to study a problem that their analysis traced back to the function returning . Is it a valid conclusion that there is no heap corruption? While heap corruption may not be the avenue of investigation you'd first pursue, you can't rule it out. In the presence of a total breakdown of normal functioning, anything can happ...

Code
Sep 5, 2012
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How did the X-Mouse setting come to be?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Commenter HiTechHiTouch wants to know whether the "X-Mouse" feature went through the "every request starts at −100 points filter", and if so, how did it manage to gain 99 points? The X-Mouse feature is ancient and long predates the "−100 points" rule. It was added back in the days when a developer could add a random rogue feature bec...

History
Sep 4, 2012
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Why don't the shortcuts I put in the CSIDL_COMMON_FAVORITES folder show up in the Favorites menu?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

A customer created some shortcuts in the folder, expecting them to appear in the Favorites menu for all users. Instead, they appeared in the Favorites menu for no users. Why isn't working? The value was added at the same time as the other values, and its name strongly suggests that its relationship to is the same as the relationship between ...

Other
Sep 3, 2012
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Buzzword-filled subject line easily misinterpreted by unsuspecting manager

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

A colleague of mine submitted some paperwork regarding the end-date of his college intern. The automated response combined HR buzzwords in an unfortunate way: Subject: Intern Termination Report was executed Just to be sure, my colleague stopped by his intern's office. He's still there. And still alive. For now.

Non-Computer