The Old New Thing
Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.
Latest posts
How do I programmatically create folders like My Pictures if they were manually deleted?
A corporate customer had a problem with their employees accidentally deleting folders like Videos and Pictures and are looking for a way to restore them, short ...
Le Chatelier's Principle in action: Administrative overrides
Today we have another example of Le Chatelier's Principle as interpreted by John Gall: Every system resists its proper functioning. There was a video card ...
How can I get information about the items in the Recycle Bin from script?
Today we'll do a scripting version of an old C++ program: Printing information about the items in the Recycle Bin. (How you wish to act on the information is ...
Raymond's house rules for Easter Egg Hunts
One of my colleagues frustrates his family by hiding the eggs for the annual Egg Hunt way too well. "Apparently, drawers and freezers are out of bounds in the ...
How do I set a breakpoint on a function whose name contains spaces or other special characters?
If you use one of the command line debuggers based on the Debugger Engine, you can set a breakpoint on a function whose name contains spaces or other special ...
How can I get the Windows 8 touch keyboard to display autocomplete suggestions like the Bing app?
A customer observed that if you use the Windows 8 Bing app with the touch keyboard, the top of the touch keyboard includes autocomplete suggestions for ...
There is no complete list of all notifications balloon tips in Windows
A customer wanted a complete list of all notifications balloon tips in Windows. There is no such list. Each component is responsible for its own balloon tips ...
The gradual erosion of the car trip experience, part 2
When I learned that my nieces were heading out on a road trip, I asked, "Are you going to sing songs?" My eldest niece looked at me as if I were from Mars, ...
Microspeak: bar check
A bar check sounds like the sort of thing you receive at the end of a long evening of drinking, but that's not what a bar check is. Among the things that ...