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Some Windows structures are variable-sized, beginning with a fixed header, followed by a variable-sized array. When these structures are declared, they often declare an array of size 1 where the variable-sized array should be. For example: typedef struct _TOKEN_GROUPS { DWORD GroupCount; SID_AND_ATTRIBUTES Groups[ANYSIZE_ARRAY]; } TOKEN...

The FILETIME structure represents a 64-bit value in two parts: typedef struct _FILETIME { DWORD dwLowDateTime; DWORD dwHighDateTime; } FILETIME, *PFILETIME; You may be tempted to take the entire FILETIME structure and access it directly as if it were an __int64. After all, its memory layout exactly matches that of a 64-bit (little-endian)...

Even though a value is stored in the registry as REG_SZ, this doesn't mean that the value actually ends with a proper null terminator. At the bottom, the registry is just a hierarchically-organized name/value database. And you can lie and get away with it. Lots of people lie about their registry data. You'll find lots of things that should be...

Hereby incorporating by reference the "FakeMenu" sample in the Platform SDK. It's in the winui\shell\fakemenu directory. For those who don't have the Platform SDK, what are you doing writing Win32 programs without the Platform SDK? Download it if it didn't come with your development tools. If for some reason you don't want the Platform SDK yet ...

One of the big no-no's in dialog box management is disabling the control that has focus without first moving focus somewhere else. When you do this, the keyboard becomes dead to the dialog box, since disabled windows do not receive input. For users who don't have a mouse (say, because they have physical limitations that confine them to the keyboar...

Many people will recommend using shared data sections as a way to share data between multiple instances of an application. This sounds like a great idea, but in fact it's a security hole. Proper shared memory objects created by the CreateFileMapping function can be secured. They have security descriptors that let you specify which users are all...

Setting focus in a dialog box is more than just calling SetFocus. A dialog box maintains the concept of a "default button" (which is always a pushbutton). The default button is typically drawn with a distinctive look (a heavy outline or a different color) and indicates what action the dialog box will take when you hit Enter. Note that this is no...

It lets you put a dialog box inside a dialog box.

The WS_EX_CLIENTEDGE extended window style allows you to create a window whose client area is "sunken". When should you use this style? The Guidelines for User Interface Developers and Designers says in the section on the Design of Visual Elements that the sunken border should be used "to define the work area within a window". Spec...

If you don't want your program to display the standard crash dialog, you can disable it by setting the SEM_NOGPFAULTERRORBOX flag in the process error mode. The simple-minded way is just to do but this overwrites the previous error mode rather than augmenting it. In other words, you inadvertently turned off the other error modes! Unfortunat...