How can I register a program to auto-relaunch if it crashes or is terminated?

Raymond Chen June 5, 2017 Jun 5, 2017 06/5/17

A customer wanted a program that auto-relaunched itself if it crashes, or even is explicitly terminated by the user. They were wondering if there was a way to register such a program with the system. Right now, they have a second program that monitors the first, and if the first program crashes, then the second program relaunches it. Well, if...

How likely is it that a window will receive a WM_NULL message out of the blue?

Raymond Chen June 2, 2017 Jun 2, 2017 06/2/17

A customer discovered a bug in their control that resulted in a crash: The problem is that under certain conditions, the control doesn't initialize the g_custom­Registered­Message variable. If a WM_NULL message arrives, the test is true, and we take the lParam of the WM_NULL message and treat it as a pointer. Since the lParam of the ...

Comparing WaitOnAddress with futexes (futexi? futexen?)

Raymond Chen June 1, 2017 Jun 1, 2017 06/1/17

Linux has a synchronization primitive called a futex which is similar to Windows's Wait­On­Address in that both let you create a synchronization object out of nothing. (Well, okay, you need to set aside some memory.) The basic operations on a futex depend on what color glasses you're wearing. If you are wearing syscall-colored glasses...