If there is no 16-bit emulation layer in 64-bit Windows, how come certain 16-bit installers are allowed to run?

October 31, 2013 Oct 31, 2013 10/31/13

Raymond Chen

Troy Martin is puzzled by the remark in this knowledge base article that says No 16-bit code can run, except for recognized InstallShield and Acme installers (these are hard-coded in Wow64 to allow them to work). I agree that the sentence is rather confusingly written. It says "No 16-bit code can run, except for this code that runs." ...

Distinguishing between asking for help with a product and asking for help with a product's installation

October 30, 2013 Oct 30, 2013 10/30/13

Raymond Chen

Internally at Microsoft, we have a programmer's tool which I will call Program Q. On the peer-to-peer mailing list for Program Q, somebody asked the following question: What's the best way to look at all tables created in the past week? I want to repeat this command across multiple table repositories. Somebody chimed in with the ...

It rather involved being on the other side of this airtight hatchway: Planting DLLs into directories on the PATH for applications whose current directory is always System32

October 23, 2013 Oct 23, 2013 10/23/13

Raymond Chen

A bunch of security vulnerability reports came in from the same person, all of the form, "Program X is vulnerable to DLL planting if you create a DLL with the name Y in a directory on the PATH," with varying values of X and Y. In all the cases, Program X runs as SYSTEM with the System32 directory as its current directory, so a current ...

The hierarchy of user education, as interpreted by a vice president

October 22, 2013 Oct 22, 2013 10/22/13

Raymond Chen

One of my colleagues told me a story from his days on the Windows team. He had to give a presentation to his vice president on his feature, and he prepared his presentation and demo obsessively to make sure it went smoothly. At the meeting, there were three presentations on the schedule, all of them with features targeting IT professionals. ...