I have the handle to a file; how can I get the file name from the debugger?

Raymond Chen October 16, 2015 Oct 16, 2015 10/16/15

Suppose you're debugging and you find yourself with the handle to a file, and you would like to know what file that handle corresponds to. Well, the way you would do this from code is to call Get­Final­Path­Name­By­Handle, but you're not in code; you're in the debugger. But you can simulate what code did from the debugger...

What’s the difference between UuidFromString, IIDFromString, CLSIDFromString, GUIDFromString…

Raymond Chen October 15, 2015 Oct 15, 2015 10/15/15

A GUID and a CLSID and an IID are all the same as a UUID, but there are separate functions for converting a string into a GUID, CLSID, IID, and UUID. Are they all equivalent? If not, what's the difference? And which one should I use? The basic form for a UUID string is xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx where each x is a hexadecimal digit, ...

How do I get the user-customed name of My Computer or Recycle Bin?

Raymond Chen October 12, 2015 Oct 12, 2015 10/12/15

Today's Little Program displays the user-customized name of This PC (the folder formerly known as My Computer) or Recycle Bin. The basic principle here is that if you want to display something the same way that Explorer does, then ask the same data source that Explorer asks: The shell namespace. Today's smart pointer library is (rolls dice) ...

How does a shell namespace extension provide icons for virtual items that track the standard icons set by the user’s file associations?

Raymond Chen October 9, 2015 Oct 9, 2015 10/9/15

A customer asked, "What is the correct way to retrieve the icon associated with a file extension? We are writing a shell namespace extension that holds virtual file content, and we want to show the icon that would have been shown if the file were a physical file on disk rather than a virtual one. We tried using SH­Get­File­Info, ...

What happens if you call VirtualAlloc to MEM_COMMIT a page you never MEM_RESERVE?

Raymond Chen October 8, 2015 Oct 8, 2015 10/8/15

A customer reported that while trying to solve a problem with their program, they noticed that they had been calling Virtual­Alloc incorrectly for years. They were able to reduce it into a simple program: First of all, thank you for reducing your program. That really focuses the investigation. The customer noted that their code was ...

How do we change permissions on a share as fast as Explorer does it?

Raymond Chen October 7, 2015 Oct 7, 2015 10/7/15

A customer wanted to know what they could do to speed up changing permissions on a share. We have a large share (over 50,000 files in over 5000 folders). If we have four or five users with access to the share, and we add one more user, it takes around two minutes. If we have a hundred users and add one more, it takes around seven minutes. ...