The Old New Thing
Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.
Latest posts
The message text limit for the Marquee screen saver is 255, even if you bypass the dialog box that prevents you from entering more than 255 characters
If you find an old Windows XP machine and fire up the configuration dialog for the Marquee screen saver, you'll see that the text field for entering the ...
Why does pasting a string containing an illegal filename character into a rename edit box delete the characters from the clipboard, too?
Ane asks why, if you have a string with an illegal filename character on the clipboard, and you paste that string into a rename edit box, do the illegal ...
When does a process ID become available for reuse?
A customer wanted some information about process IDs: I'm writing some code that depends on process IDs and I'd like to understand better problem of process ...
Processes, commit, RAM, threads, and how high can you go?
Back in 2008, Igor Levicki made a boatload of incorrect assumptions in an attempt to calculate the highest a process ID can go on Windows NT. Let's look ...
Why does SHGetSpecialFolderPath take such a long time before returning a network error?
A customer reported that their program was failing to start up because the call to was taking a long time and then eventually returning with . The account that...
From inside the Redmond Reality Distortion Field: Why publish documents in PDF?
A few years ago, the Windows 7 team developed a document to introduce technology writers to the features of Windows 7. The document was released in ...
Begin feeling
A few years ago, the gas station near Microsoft's main campus (the one which had been run by my colleague in a previous stage of his career) appeared to have ...
2010 year-end link clearance
Another round of the semi-annual link clearance. And, as always, the obligatory plug for my column in TechNet Magazine...
What makes RealGetWindowClass so much more real than GetClassName?
There's and then there's . What makes more real? Recall from last time that the functions were added to support Windows accessibility. The goal with is ...