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In the discussion of the environment variable problem, BryanK posits that the real mistake was allowing batch files to modify their parent environment in the first place. Instead, they should have run in a sub-process. Try saying that when your computer has only 16KB of memory, which is how much memory the original IBM PC came with. Heck, try sa...

The "Oh no it's all messed up please fix it" mode

Although the theoretical maximum file size on NTFS is 264−1 clusters, the current implementation of the NTFS driver supports files up to "only" 16TB minus 64KB. (In other words, the disk format supports files up to 264−1 clusters, but the current drivers won't go above 16TB−64KB.) Back in 2002, in order to verify that the driver...

Back in 16-bit Windows, MS-DOS cast a long and dark shadow. The really ugly low-level munging was very much in the MS-DOS spirit. You opened files by setting up registers and issuing an , just like in MS-DOS. Although the interrupt went to Windows instead, Windows maintained the MS-DOS calling convention. Process startup followed the same "real me...

During the betas of Windows Vista, the final set of sample logon pictures had yet to be determined, so a bunch of placeholder bitmaps were created. These placeholders consisted of the letters FPO in a box. FPO is a standard term in desktop publishing; it stands for For Position Only. In order to permit designers to perform page layout before ...

Back in Windows 95, there was one bug that was originally filed against the window manager team. Upon closer investigation, the window manager team determined that the bug was really in the video driver and added their analysis to the bug as they reassigned it. I don't know what overcame them, but the analysis was written in iambic pentamete...

"Why start up another program to see folder sizes, when they should just be right there, in Explorer, all the time?" The same reason \\ does not autocomplete to all the computers on the network: Because it would destroy corporate networks. Showing folder sizes "all the time" means that when you open, say, the root of a large server, Explorer wou...

If you look up the documentation on the and messages, they just say "not implemented". What's going on here? The and messages were added back in 2002 for the breadcrumb bar to use. Back in those days, the breadcrumb bar wasn't what you see in Windows Vista today, a series of buttons with drop-down arrows, each representing a level in the hiera...

If you ask an old-timer how to test for file existence, they'll say, "Use ." This is still probably the quickest way to test for file existence, since it requires only a single call. Other methods such as or require a separate or call, which triggers another network round-trip, which adds to the cost. But back in the old days, the preference f...

James Manning mentioned in a footnote to a blog entry on PowerShell and WMI that he considers the Ctrl+Backspace shortcut key a Windows-ism. Where did this shortcut key come from? From a fan of the Brief editor. A few people in the early days of the Internet Explorer group used the Brief editor, which uses Ctrl+Backspace as the shortcut key to ...