The Old New Thing

December 2013 - Page 3 of 4 - The Old New Thing

Some vice presidents forget that not everybody attends the same meetings that they do

December 11, 2013 Dec 11, 2013 12/11/13
Raymond Chen
There are some vice presidents who forget that not everybody attends the same meetings that they do. When they send email to the entire division, they use buzzwords and acronyms that are not widely-understood. For example, they may mention the great progress that the Nosebleed team is making with DOXLA,¹ but that doesn't mean much to ...

Mysterious email, possible social engineering, whatever it was, it didn't work

December 10, 2013 Dec 10, 2013 12/10/13
Raymond Chen
A colleague of mine got a strange piece of email. It went something like this, although I've substituted a fictitious nation and fictitious company name to protect the guilty(?). Subject: St. George's Island Embassy Trade Mission: Meeting request on behalf of Contoso Corporation Dear ⟨name⟩, I am contacting you following the ...

This was only a test; if this had been an actual concert…

December 9, 2013 Dec 9, 2013 12/9/13
Raymond Chen
I dreamed that there was a fire in Benaroya Hall during a concert. The flames swirled overhead up by the ceiling. The exit doors had been blocked by security, so people flowed from door to door looking for a way out. Ha-ha, it was just a drill, and the flames were pyrotechnics. This dream brought to you by Great Ideas in Public Safety...

Destroying all child processes (and grandchildren) when the parent exits

December 9, 2013 Dec 9, 2013 12/9/13
Raymond Chen
Today's Little Program launches a child process and then just hangs around. If you terminate the parent process, then all the children (and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, you get the idea) are also terminated. The tool for this is the Job Object. Specifically, we mark the job as "kill on job close" which causes all processes in the...
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Is it wrong to call SHFileOperation from a service?

December 6, 2013 Dec 6, 2013 12/6/13
Raymond Chen
A customer had a simple question: "Is it wrong to call SHFile­Operation from a service?" I don't know if I'd call it wrong, but I'd call it highly inadvisable. Update: See Is it wrong to call SHFileOperation from a service? Revised...
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What's the difference between the wParam of the WM_NOTIFY message and the idFrom in the NMHDR structure?

December 4, 2013 Dec 4, 2013 12/4/13
Raymond Chen
The WM_NOTIFY message takes the following parameters: Notice that the identifier of the control sending the message appears in two places, once in the wParam and again in the idFrom. What's the difference? There is no difference. It's just a convenience. The same value is passed in both places, and you can check whichever one is easier ...
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Sir, is this your high-speed ferry?

December 3, 2013 Dec 3, 2013 12/3/13
Raymond Chen
The Victoria Clipper is a high-speed ferry that runs primarily between Seattle and Vancouver Victoria, BC. Early Sunday morning, a man scaled a fence and drove off with one of the boats. The issue was resolved without major incident and only minimal damage, which means that it is now open season on jokes! "Why yes, officer, this is my ...

How do I configure the timeout used by UI0Detect (Interactive Services Detection service)?

December 3, 2013 Dec 3, 2013 12/3/13
Raymond Chen
Windows Vista introduced Session 0 Isolation which enforces the rule that services should not display UI. If a service tries to display UI, another service known as the Interactive Services Detection service detects this situation and signals the user that a service wants to display UI and gives the user an opportunity to switch to the ...

The walls of my friend's house sometimes randomly got corrupted

December 2, 2013 Dec 2, 2013 12/2/13
Raymond Chen
One evening, I had a series of three dreams. In each one, I visited an unusual home. In the third dream, I visited the home of a friend of mine. He lived in a white stucco split-level, a stereotypical suburban home. What made the house interesting was that if you did things just right, dark dots would appear on the wall and slowly consume it...