Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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How can I add an environment variable to a process launched via Shell­Execute­Ex or IContext­Menu?

January 31st, 2024
Hooking into the way the Windows shell launches processes.

Smoothing over the differences (and defects) in the various implementations of IMemory­Buffer

January 30th, 2024
Stick to the part that nobody messes up.

A comparison of various implementations of the Windows Runtime IMemory­Buffer

January 29th, 2024
Every unhappy class is unhappy in its own way.

How can I expose a pre-existing block of memory as a Windows Runtime object without copying the data?

January 26th, 2024
Assembling all the pieces.

How can I give away a COM reference just before my object destructs?

January 25th, 2024
You have to do it before committing to destruction.

The dangerous implementations of the IMemory­Buffer­Reference.Closed event

January 24th, 2024
Mistakenly handing out COM references that don't work.

The useless IMemory­Buffer­Reference.Closed event

January 23rd, 2024
It tells you that you have already lost.

Accessing a block of memory represented by a Windows Runtime IMemoryBuffer

January 22nd, 2024
Through the currency known as an IMemoryBufferReference.

The case of the fail-fast trying to log a caught exception

January 19th, 2024
What is being thrown and why can't we log it?

Implementing two-phase initialization with ATL

January 18th, 2024
ATL looks like it supports two-phase initialization, but it doesn't.