The Old New Thing

Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.

Latest posts

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen
Aug 21, 2012

Sorry we got cut off, my phone just auto-rebooted

Some time ago, I was on the phone when the connection suddenly cut out. I looked at the my phone display and it said, Auto-restart in 7 seconds. The seconds ...

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Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen
Aug 20, 2012

How do I customize how my application windows are grouped in the Taskbar?

Benjamin Smedberg wants to know how to customize the icon used in the Taskbar for applications that are grouped, when the application is a runtime for ...

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Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen
Aug 17, 2012

My colleague picked a good day to go out and catch a baseball game

I ran into one of my colleagues at the coffee stand and asked him how things were going. He said that Wednesday was his wife's birthday, and he asked her if she...

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Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen
Aug 17, 2012

What if my application is really two applications bundled into a single file, and I want them collected into two groups on the taskbar in Windows 7?

A customer wanted to prevent multiple copies of their program from being grouped on the taskbar. They didn't give an explanation why, but let's assume that ...

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Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen
Aug 16, 2012

Charles Petzold's Programming Windows Sixth Edition has reached Release Preview

We interrupt this program for a word from Microsoft Press. A few months ago, I noted that Charles Petzold is coming back with another edition of Programming ...

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Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen
Aug 16, 2012

What happened to the Windows 2000 "Set default language setting for the system" button?

Last time, we looked at the evolution of the control panel settings which control the language groups for which Windows will install fonts, code page ...

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Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen
Aug 15, 2012

What happened to the Windows 2000 "Language settings for the system" control panel?

In 2011, a customer had a question about migrating from Windows 2000 to Windows XP. (That's right, this customer was still using Windows 2000 in ...

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Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen
Aug 14, 2012

How long does it take for a notification icon to stop appearing in the Notification Area Icons control panel?

A customer reported that even after uninstalling their application, the notification icon entry remains in the Notification Area Icons control panel. Yup, that...

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Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen
Aug 13, 2012

Why am I in the Quake credits?

Anon wants to know why I am listed in the credits for the video game Quake under the "Special Thanks" section. "Were you an early tester/debugger?" I've ...

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