The Old New Thing

December 2012 - The Old New Thing

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

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

December 28, 2012 Dec 28, 2012 12/28/12
Raymond Chen
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...
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What is so special about the instance handle 0x10000000?

December 27, 2012 Dec 27, 2012 12/27/12
Raymond Chen
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...
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What celebration of Kwanzaa would be complete without Sandra Lee's infamous Kwanzaa cake?

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

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

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

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

December 24, 2012 Dec 24, 2012 12/24/12
Raymond Chen
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 ...
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Why do BackupRead and BackupWrite require synchronous file handles?

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