Showing tag results for History

Feb 15, 2007
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Why can't you set the command prompt's current directory to a UNC?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

If you try to set the current directory of a command prompt, you get the error message "CMD does not support UNC paths as current directories." What's going on here? It's MS-DOS backwards compatibility. If the current directory were a UNC, there wouldn't be anything to return to MS-DOS programs when they call function 19h (Get current drive). Tha...

History
Feb 12, 2007
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Why doesn't the window manager unregister window classes when the owning DLL unloads?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

If you look at the documentation for the function, you'll see that it calls out different behavior depending on whether you're running Windows 95 or Windows NT. Commenter Vipin asked why Windows NT doesn't follow Windows 95's lead. Back in the old days, 16-bit Windows did unregister classes automatically when a DLL unloaded. ...

History
Feb 5, 2007
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Why did Explorer say "The target you specified is on the desktop"?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

In Windows 95, if you had a shortcut to a file on the desktop, view the shortcut's properties, and then clicked "Find Target", you got the message "The target you specified is on the desktop". It also selected the item on the desktop to help you find it. But why didn't it just open an Explorer window that viewed the desktop? Because in Windo...

History
Jan 25, 2007
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Where did the Windows Vista wallpaper images come from?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Windows Vista needed some new wallpapers. Where to get them? Historically, they were purchased from a professional service, which is expensive since Microsoft would need worldwide rights to reproduce (not just use) the image, and not just for a few months, but for decades. Besides, there are a lot of good amateur photographers at Microsoft who woul...

History
Jan 11, 2007
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The history of the RichEdit control from Murray Sargent

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Murray Sargent is a programmer over in the Office division whose blog deals mostly with math in Office, but he also slips into RichEdit history. If you can't get enough of a history fix from this web site, you can surf on over to Murray's for another hit.

History
Jan 8, 2007
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Why do property sheets sometimes take a first-chance exception?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Reader cmonachan asked why can cause a first-chance exception. This is mentioned in Knowledge Base article 158552. But why take the exception in the first place? First off, let's take MFC out of the picture. The first-chance exception is coming from the property sheet manager. MFC is just the middle-man. Okay, so why the first-chance exception...

History
Jan 3, 2007
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Wait, but why can I GetProcAddress for IsDialogMessage?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Okay, so I explained that a lot of so-called functions are really redirecting macros, function-like macros, intrinsic functions, and inline functions, and consequently, won't actually get anything since the function doesn't exist in the form of an exported function. But why, then, can you for ? Let's take a closer look at the exports from . H...

History
Dec 22, 2006
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The evolution of version resources – corrupted 32-bit version resources

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Last time we looked at the format of 32-bit version resources, but I ended with the remark that what you saw purported to be the resources of but actually weren't. What's going on here? The resources I presented last time were what the resources of should have been, but in fact they aren't. A common mistake in generating 32-bit resources is...

History
Dec 21, 2006
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The evolution of version resources – 32-bit version resources

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Last time we looked at the format of 16-bit version resources. The 32-bit version is nearly identical, except that everything is now in Unicode. Each node is stored in the following structure (in pseudo-C): In words, each version node begins with a 16-bit value describing the size of the nodes in bytes (including its children), followed by a 16...

History