The Old New Thing

Debug session: Why is an LPC server not responding?

February 15, 2013 Feb 15, 2013 02/15/13
Raymond Chen
A particular scenario was hanging, and the team responsible for the scenario debugged it to the point where they saw that their X component was waiting for their Y component, which was waiting for Explorer, so they asked for help chasing the hang into Explorer. The team was kind enough to have shared what they've learned so far...

What’s the story of the onestop.mid file in the Media directory?

February 12, 2013 Feb 12, 2013 02/12/13
Raymond Chen
If you look in your folder, you'll find a MIDI file called . What's the story behind this odd little MIDI file? Aaron Margosis considers this file a security risk because "if an attacker can cause that file to be played, it will cause lasting mental pain and anguish to everybody within earshot." Despite Wikipedia's claims[citation needed...

Let me take this shortcut across Lake Saskatchewan

February 11, 2013 Feb 11, 2013 02/11/13
Raymond Chen
I dreamed that I had to drive from Los Angeles to Berkeley to catch my flight home. To do this, I used a product from a local startup company: A computerized map of the Bay Area. There were two routes across Lake Saskatchewan. The southern route is highway I-70, and the northern route is an elevated highway that goes right past the head of ...

Display an overlay on the taskbar button

February 11, 2013 Feb 11, 2013 02/11/13
Raymond Chen
Today's "Little Program" displays an overlay on the taskbar button. I've seen some people call this a "badge", but "overlay" is the official term. Start with our scratch program and make the following changes: #include <comip.h> #include <comdef.h> #include <shlobj.h> #include <shellapi.h> _COM_SMARTPTR_TYPEDEF(...

The Essential Guide To Dim Sum

February 8, 2013 Feb 8, 2013 02/8/13
Raymond Chen
The folks over at BuzzFeed Food have put together this marvelous Essential Guide To Dim Sum. The field guide includes pictures of dim sum offerings, organized by food preparation style, then sub-categorized by physical appearance. Each dish is accompanied by its name in three languages (English, Mandarin Chinese, and Cantonese), along with ...

For the Nitpickers: Enhanced-mode Windows 3.0 didn’t exactly run a copy of standard-mode Windows inside the virtual machine

February 8, 2013 Feb 8, 2013 02/8/13
Raymond Chen
Generally speaking, Enhanced-mode Windows 3.0 ran a copy of standard-mode Windows inside the virtual machine. This statement isn't exactly true, but it's true enough. Commenter Nitpicker objected, "Why are you threatening us with the Nitpicker's Corner for asking about this issue instead of explaining it once and linking it everywhere...

Once you know something can be done, doing it is much easier

February 7, 2013 Feb 7, 2013 02/7/13
Raymond Chen
Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the star of this story, but I'm told that there was a notable mathematician who believed the Perfect Graph Conjecture to be false and spent many years trying to prove it one way or another. Meanwhile, another mathematician (presumably László Lovász) announced that he had found ...