December 2012 - The Old New Thing

2012 year-end link clearance

Raymond Chen December 31, 2012 Dec 31, 2012 12/31/12

Another round of the semi-annual link clearance. Snark New! Improved! Shape Up Your Life!: The New York Times book review of Timothy Ferriss's The 4-Hour Body reads like a recap on Television Without Pity, but this time they're making fun of a book! "'The 4-Hour Body' reads as if The New England...

Why can't you rename deleted items in the Recycle Bin?

Raymond Chen December 31, 2012 Dec 31, 2012 12/31/12

I misread a question from commenter Comedy Gaz, so let's try it again. (Good thing I held one last Suggestion Box Monday of the year in reserve.) Why can't you rename deleted items in the Recycle Bin? Okay, first of all, "Why would you want to do this?" I see no explanation for how this could possibly escape the 100-point hole every ...

What do HeapLock and HeapUnlock do, and when do I need to call them?

Raymond Chen December 28, 2012 Dec 28, 2012 12/28/12

You never need to call the HeapLock and HeapUnlock functions under normal operation. Assuming the heap is serialized (which is the default), all the standard heap functions like HeapAllocate and HeapFree will automatically serialize. In fact, the way they serialize is by calling the¹ HeapLock and Heap...

What is so special about the instance handle 0x10000000?

Raymond Chen December 27, 2012 Dec 27, 2012 12/27/12

A customer wanted to know what it means when the LoadLibrary function returns the special value 0x10000000. Um, it means that the library was loaded at 0x10000000? Okay, here's some more information: "We're trying to debug an application which loads DLLs and attempts to hook their registry accesses when they call DllRegister...

What celebration of Kwanzaa would be complete without Sandra Lee's infamous Kwanzaa cake?

Raymond Chen December 26, 2012 Dec 26, 2012 12/26/12

For those unfamiliar with Sandra Lee, her gimmick is that the ingredients in her recipes are primarily prepared foods, a food-preparation technique (I'm reluctant to call it cooking) which she calls "semi-homemade." First, the creation one critic called "an edible hate crime." Next, the apology from the creator. I guess I imagined ...

A question about endian-ness turns out to be the wrong question

Raymond Chen December 26, 2012 Dec 26, 2012 12/26/12

Via a customer liaison, we received what seemed like a simple question: "How can I detect whether a Windows machine is big-endian or little-endian?" You could actually answer this question (say by coughing up a code fragment that stores a 16-bit value to memory and then takes it apart into bytes to see how it got stored, or by simply hard-...

You too can use your psychic powers: Spaces in paths

Raymond Chen December 25, 2012 Dec 25, 2012 12/25/12

I'm going to be lazy today and make you solve the problem. Did a recent security hotfix change change the way we handle UNC paths with spaces? Normally, if we open the Run dialog and type \\server\share\Support Library\, the Support Library folder opens. But recently it stopped working. Instead of opening the Support Library folder, we get ...

Miss Denmark, she is dressed as a mermaid because we couldn't secure the rights from LEGO

Raymond Chen December 24, 2012 Dec 24, 2012 12/24/12

Once again, the commentary is NSFW, but once again, they so deserve it. Miss Universe 2012 National Costumes, Part 1 my favorite is the commentary for the Dominican Republic) Miss Universe 2012 National Costumes, Part 2 Miss Universe 2012 National Costumes, Part 3 (but Venezuela wins the things on top her head category) By the way, ...

What is the proper handling of WM_RENDERFORMAT and WM_RENDERALLFORMATS?

Raymond Chen December 24, 2012 Dec 24, 2012 12/24/12

Jeremy points out that the documentation for SetClipboardData says that the clipboard owner must not call OpenClipboard when responding to the WM_RENDERFORMAT and WM_RENDERALLFORMATS messages. On the other hand, the documentation for WM_RENDERALLFORMATS says that the owner must call OpenClipboard ...

Why do BackupRead and BackupWrite require synchronous file handles?

Raymond Chen December 21, 2012 Dec 21, 2012 12/21/12

The BackupRead and BackupWrite functions require that the handle you provide by synchronous. (In other words, that they not be opened with FILE_FLAG_OVERLAPPED.) A customer submitted the following question: We have been using asynchronous file handles with the BackupRead. Every so often, the call to BackupRead will fail...

The Old New Thing