The Old New Thing
Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.
Latest posts
Was there really an Opera billboard outside Microsoft main campus?
Maybe somebody took a picture.c
What happens to a named object when all handles to it are closed?
A customer had a question about named kernel objects: I understand that handles in a process if leaked will be destroyed by the kernel when the process exits. My question would be around named objects. Would named objects hold their value indefinitely? If I run a small utility app to increment a named counting semaphore, the count of that named semaphore could be lost when that app exits? I would expect it to always hold its current value so that transactions across processes and across time could be held even if no process is holding on to it. When the last handle to a named kernel object (such as a na...
It rather involved being on the other side of this airtight hatchway: If you grant users full control over critical files, then it's not the fault of the system for letting users modify them
Today's dubious security vulnerability is another example of If you reconfigure your computer to be insecure, don't be surprised that there's a security vulnerability. This example comes from by an actual security vulnerability report submitted to Microsoft: I have found a critical security vulnerability that allows arbitrary elevation to administrator from unprivileged accounts. I can just stop there because your brain has already stopped processing input because of all the alarm bells ringing after you read that first step. That first step gives away the farm. If you grant control to the entire content...
Yes, the Windows 7 beta wallpaper was a picture of a betta fish
It wasn't long before people realized that the fish in the default wallpaper for the Windows 7 beta was a betta fish. This was intended to be a cute little pun, though some people took the semiotics to an extreme, Dude, this is Windows, not The Da Vinci Code. It's not like the people who chose the wallpaper are using a backchannel to pass secret messages to you like "I know I'm not supposed to tell you, but here's the Windows product schedule" or "Help, I'm trapped in a wallpaper factory!" They're just having a bit of fun. I have yet to see anybody point out that the fish was blowing seven bubbles. And no...
Shutdown reason codes are reason codes, not error codes or HRESULTs
A customer liaison asked the following question on behalf of his customer: My customer is finding that their Windows Server 2003 system has restarted, and they want to find out why. I've found some event log similar to the ones below, but I don't know what error code is. I've searched the Knowledge Base but couldn't find anything relevant. Please let me know why the system restarted. The value is not an error code. It says right there that it's a reason code: The system shutdown reason codes are documented in MSDN under the devious heading System Shutdown Reason Codes. In this case, the value is a ...
Be on the alert: Mainstream and alternative medicines mixed together on the store shelves, not clearly distinguished
I was in the supermarket looking for cold medicine, and as is my wont, I like to read the fine print before choosing a product. Most of the products listed their active ingredients in the form Active Ingredient: XYZ 150mg. But there were a few that said Active Ingredient: XYZ 6X. What is this 6X? How much is 6X? Six times what? A closer look at the box reveals the word Homeopathic unobtrusively written towards the bottom of the box. The 6X notation means that the active ingredient's concentration is one part in 106, or one part in a million. Suppose the dosage is one teaspoon. That's about five...
Reflections create Xbox logo on neighbor’s roof
Marketing gone crazy.
On LockWindowUpdate: Locking the taskbar
Andy Visser posted to the Suggestion Box something that wasn't so much a suggestion as a comment, presumably to get around the fact that comments on the original item had been closed: "I've found that the start bar seems to behave like it may be using this call incorrectly. I put my start bar on the left hand side of the screen. When I try to resize the bar (dragging its edge left and right), the system tray will dynamically move icons (based on tray width), seemingly disregarding the lock. The rest of the bar waits until MouseUp to redraw." Actually, the taskbar (that's the name of the thing you're referring to...
If you return from the main thread, does the process exit?
No, but maybe yes.