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The Old New Thing
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    The Old New Thing

    February 2014 | The Old New Thing

    How can I detect that my program was run from Task Scheduler, or my custom shortcut, or a service, or whatever
    How can I detect that my program was run from Task Scheduler, or my custom shortcut, or a service, or whatever
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenFebruary 28, 2014Feb 28, 201402/28/14
    Suppose you want your program to behave differently depending on whether it is launched from the Start menu, or by clicking the pinned icon on the taskbar, or by Scheduled Task, or from a service, or whatever. How can a program detect and distinguish these scenarios? The answer is you don't. And you shouldn't try. Instead of trying to guess ...

    Comments are closed.0Code
    What does the SEE_MASK_UNICODE flag in ShellExecuteEx actually do?
    What does the SEE_MASK_UNICODE flag in ShellExecuteEx actually do?
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenFebruary 27, 2014Feb 27, 201402/27/14
    Somebody with a rude name wonders what the SEE_MASK_UNICODE flag does. It does nothing. The flag was introduced when porting the Windows 95 shell to Windows NT. It happened further back in history than I have permission to access the Windows source code history database, but I can guess how it got introduced. One of the things ...

    Comments are closed.0Code
    Why are leading digits converted to language-specific digit shapes, but not trailing digits, and how do I suppress the conversion entirely?
    Why are leading digits converted to language-specific digit shapes, but not trailing digits, and how do I suppress the conversion entirely?
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenFebruary 26, 2014Feb 26, 201402/26/14
    If you have a string like 12345ABCDE67890, and you render it on an Arabic system, you might get ٠١٢٣٤ABCDE67890. The leading digits are rendered as Arabic-Indic digits, but the trailing digits are rendered as European digits. What's going on here? This is a feature known as contextual digit substitution. You can ...

    Comments are closed.0Code
    A simple email introduction: Fan mail
    A simple email introduction: Fan mail
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenFebruary 25, 2014Feb 25, 201402/25/14
    One of my former colleagues on the Windows kernel team wasn't afraid to make changes all across the system when necessary. If the engineering team decided to upgrade to a new version of the C++ compiler, my colleague was the one who gave it a test-drive on the entire Windows source code, and fixed all the warnings and errors that kick up as ...

    Comments are closed.0Non-Computer
    Nieces sometimes extrapolate from insufficient contextual data
    Nieces sometimes extrapolate from insufficient contextual data
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenFebruary 24, 2014Feb 24, 201402/24/14
    My brother-in-law enjoys greeting his nieces when they come over to visit by throwing them into the air and asking, "叫聲我?" (Who am I?) The nieces happily reply, "舅舅." (Uncle.) He then tosses them up into the air a second time and says, "大聲啲!" (Louder!) And the nieces happily shout, "&#...

    Comments are closed.0Non-Computer
    Logging the contents of every message box dialog via automation
    Logging the contents of every message box dialog via automation
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenFebruary 24, 2014Feb 24, 201402/24/14
    Today's Little Program logs the contents of every message box dialog, or anything that vaguely resembles a message box dialog. (Since there's no way for sure to know whether a dialog box is a message box or not.) This is the same pattern as the program we wrote last week, but with different guts when the window opens. This time, we see ...

    Comments are closed.0Code
    How can I make sure my program is launched only from my helper program and no other parent?
    How can I make sure my program is launched only from my helper program and no other parent?
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenFebruary 21, 2014Feb 21, 201402/21/14
    Say you have a collection of programs which work together. One of them is the "master" program that runs the show, and it has a bunch of "assistant" programs that it launches to accomplish various subtasks. These assistants are not meant to be run by themselves; they are meant to be run only by the master program. How do you design the ...

    Comments are closed.0Code
    What is the programmatic equivalent to unchecking the box to prevent a file from having its contents indexed?
    What is the programmatic equivalent to unchecking the box to prevent a file from having its contents indexed?
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenFebruary 20, 2014Feb 20, 201402/20/14
    A customer wanted to know how they could write a program that automatically checked and unchecked the box that appears on a file's property sheet on the General tab, clicking the Advanced button, and then checking or unchecking the item whose name keeps changing: The checkbox maps to the file attribute formally known as ...

    Comments are closed.0Code
    When will the static control automatically delete the image loaded into it, and when is it the responsibility of the application?
    When will the static control automatically delete the image loaded into it, and when is it the responsibility of the application?
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenFebruary 19, 2014Feb 19, 201402/19/14
    If you create a static control with initial contents (for example, by creating a BITMAP or ICON control in a dialog template), then the static control will load the contents upon creation and destroy the contents upon destruction. So at least in the case where you don't touch the static control, things will work automatically. But once you ...

    Comments are closed.0Code
    If you cancel an operation while it's in progress, then it's not surprising that it's only half-done
    If you cancel an operation while it's in progress, then it's not surprising that it's only half-done
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenFebruary 18, 2014Feb 18, 201402/18/14
    A customer (via their customer liaison) started by asking why they were seeing an unexpected access control entry in the security descriptor of an object. The ACEs on the parent grant access to Administrators, CREATOR OWNER, SYSTEM, and Users, but the ACEs on the child object (which should simply have been inherited from the parent) include ...

    Comments are closed.0Tips/Support
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