The Old New Thing

What was the relationship between Outlook and Outlook Express?

March 31, 2015 Mar 31, 2015 03/31/15

Raymond Chen

None.

Flaw reported in Windows 95

March 27, 2015 Mar 27, 2015 03/27/15

Raymond Chen

And a note from Mom.

Setting up a new computer often results in leftover slot covers, so what do you do with the slot covers?

March 3, 2015 Mar 3, 2015 03/3/15

Raymond Chen

Doorstop.

Why is there a BSTR cache anyway?

January 7, 2015 Jan 7, 2015 01/7/15

Raymond Chen

It was useful, once.

My pants are fancy!

December 25, 2014 Dec 25, 2014 12/25/14

Raymond Chen

During the development of Windows, the User Research team tried out an early build of some proposed changes on volunteers from the general community. During one of the tests, they invited the volunteer to just play around with a particular component, to explore it the way they would at home. The usability subject scrolled around a bit, ...

The Softsel Hot List for the week of December 22, 1986

December 23, 2014 Dec 23, 2014 12/23/14

Raymond Chen

Look at all that stuff people bought.

How did protected-mode 16-bit Windows fix up jumps to functions that got discarded?

December 19, 2014 Dec 19, 2014 12/19/14

Raymond Chen

Commenter Neil presumes that Windows 286 and later simply fixed up the movable entry table with jmp selector:offset instructions once and for all. It could have, but it went one step further. Recall that the point of the movable entry table is to provide a fixed location that always refers to a specific function, no matter where that ...

If 16-bit Windows had a single input queue, how did you debug applications on it?

November 26, 2014 Nov 26, 2014 11/26/14

Raymond Chen

After learning about the bad things that happened if you synchronized your application's input queue with its debugger, commenter kme wonders how debugging worked in 16-bit Windows, since 16-bit Windows didn't have asynchronous input? In 16-bit Windows, all applications shared the same input queue, which means you were permanently in the ...

Why is the FAT driver called FASTFAT? Why would anybody ever write SLOWFAT?

October 30, 2014 Oct 30, 2014 10/30/14

Raymond Chen

Anon is interested in why the FAT driver is called FASTFAT.SYS. "Was there an earlier slower FAT driver? What could you possibly get so wrong with a FAT implementation that it needed to be chucked out?" The old FAT driver probably had a boring name like, um, FAT.SYS. At some point, somebody decided to write a newer, faster one, so they ...

Why is there a 64KB no-man's land near the end of the user-mode address space?

October 9, 2014 Oct 9, 2014 10/9/14

Raymond Chen

We learned some time ago that there is a 64KB no-man's land near the 2GB boundary to accommodate a quirk of the Alpha AXP processor architecture. But that's not the only reason why it's there. The no-man's land near the 2GB boundary is useful even on x86 processors because it simplifies parameter validation at the boundary between user mode ...