The Old New Thing

WaitForInputIdle should really be called WaitForProcessStartupComplete

The function waits for a process to finish its initialization, which is determined when it reaches a state where it is just sitting around waiting for messages. The documentation for doesn't even get around to the initialization part until the Remarks section. If all you read is the one-sentence summary, Waits until the specified process is...

How does delay-loading use binding information?

In the documentation for delay-loading, there's a remark that says that the call to can be avoided if there is binding information. A customer who received the explanation of why you can't delay-load pointed out that paragraph and asked whether this means that you can delay-load if you bind to it. (Getting around to answering this ...

What is DLL import binding?

Last time, we saw how hinting is used to speed up the resolving of imported functions. Today, we'll look at binding. Recall that the module loader resolves imports by locating the function in the export table of the linked-to DLL and recording the results in the loaded module's table of imported function addresses so that code from the ...

What is DLL import hinting?

Binding and hinting are two types of optimizations to improve the load-time performance of a module (executable or DLL). We'll start with hinting, then look at binding, and then look at how it affects delay-loading. The import table for a module contains a list of DLLs and a list of functions from that DLL which the module wishes to link to. ...

Simplifying context menu extensions with IExecuteCommand

The interface is a simpler form of context menu extension which takes care of the annoying parts of so you can focus on your area of expertise, namely, doing the actual thing the user selected, and leave the shell to doing the grunt work of managing the UI part. I've never needed a scratch shell extension before, so I guess it's time to ...

How do I access the magic IEEE floating point values like NaN in code?

There are functions like , , , and for detecting that a floating point value is one of the special values like NaN, but how do you actually generate one of these values? You can access these values from the template. Wait, where's negative infinity? The compiler folks provided these handy little definitions for when you need to ...