The Old New Thing
Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.
Latest posts

Debugger breakpoints are usually implemented by patching the in-memory copy of the code

The code in memory may not match what the debugger shows you if the debugger is itself is doing the changing.

The case of a program that crashed on its first instruction

Didn't even make it out of the gate.

Why do I observe reads from a memory-mapped file when writing large blocks?

The CPU doesn't see the entire write at once.

How do I declare an operator overload for my Windows Runtime class?

That's not something expressible in the Windows Runtime.

What’s the difference between Display size and Screen size in the Windows 95 display control panel?

No meaningful difference, though others have created a difference.

On the limits of time travel in the face of undefined behavior in C

C imposes some constraints, but the principle is mostly still there.

On locale-aware substring matching, either case-sensitive or case-insensitive

It's surprisingly complicated, but fortunately, somebody has done it for you.

What has case distinction but is neither uppercase nor lowercase?

It has one foot in each world but belongs to neither.

I have enabled “take ownership” permission, but I still cannot obtain write access

Taking ownership is only one part of gaining write access.