What is a hard error, and what makes it harder than an easy error? January 16, 2024 Jan 16, 2024 01/16/24 Raymond Chen A throwback to the early days of 16-bit Windows.
That time the Word team sent presents to the children of WordPerfect’s executive vice president December 25, 2023 Dec 25, 2023 12/25/23 Raymond Chen No, it wasn't creepy.
What was the code name for 64-bit Windows? December 5, 2023 Dec 5, 2023 12/5/23 Raymond Chen Sundown, which was a hidden jab at the competition.
In Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, what is a “grabber”? November 27, 2023 Nov 27, 2023 11/27/23 Raymond Chen It grabbed your MS-DOS screen and put it into a window.
What is the thread reaper? October 31, 2023 Oct 31, 2023 10/31/23 Raymond Chen Should you fear the thread reaper?
On the failed unrealized promise of RegOverridePredefKey October 20, 2023 Oct 20, 2023 10/20/23 Raymond Chen An early attempt to sandbox the registry for a process.
A complaint about Links the Cat, the Office assistant October 3, 2023 Oct 3, 2023 10/3/23 Raymond Chen Do all cats do that?
Why is kernel32.dll running in user mode and not kernel mode, like its name implies? September 26, 2023 Sep 26, 2023 09/26/23 Raymond Chen It's just a name, and it comes from the days before user-mode/kernel-mode separation.
Why did the 16-bit _lopen and _lcreat function return -1 on failure instead of 0? September 19, 2023 Sep 19, 2023 09/19/23 Raymond Chen Trying to look like somebody else.
Just for fun: What happens when you shift a register by more than the register size? September 4, 2023 Sep 4, 2023 09/4/23 Raymond Chen A comparative study of processor architectures.