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Many Windows information mechanisms are based on message broadcasts, among them DDE, WM_FONTCHANGE, and changes in system settings. Why do these mechanisms use broadcasts, when we know that broadcasts can result in the system grinding to a halt due to windows that have stopped processing messages? Because in 16-bit Windows, you didn't have this...

Programs that weren't designed to handle long file names would make mistakes like taking the path to the executable and writing it into the registry, unaware that the path might contain a space that needs quoting. (Spaces—while technically legal—were extremely rare in SFN paths.) The CreateProcess function had to decide whether to "auto...

Although many people use the Date/Time control panel to flip through a calendar, that's not what it is for. In fact, if you use it that way, you can create all sorts of havoc! In its original incarnation in Windows 95, the Date/Time control panel changed your date and time. If you clicked through the calendar to see next month, you actually ...

Control panel programs and property sheets don't show up in the taskbar. Why not? As I recall, the explanation was that control panel programs and property sheets aren't applications. They are auxiliary helper windows that assist you with a task, but they aren't a program in their own right. Therefore, they don't get a taskbar button. I've alway...

Today I'm going to tell a story from 1996. Why? Because I can. One of the tests performed by Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) was the NCT packet stress test which had the nickname "Hell". The purpose of the test was to flood a network card with an insane number of packets, in order to see how it handled extreme conditions. It uncovered packe...

Sometimes people ask for features that are such blatant security holes I don't know what they were thinking. Is there a way to get the current user's password? I have a program that does some stuff, then reboots the system, and I want to have the current user's password so I can log that user back in when I'm done, then my program can resume its o...

By default, Explorer does not show files that have the flag, since somebody went out of their way to hide those files from view. You can, of course, ask that such files be shown anyway by going to Folder Options and selecting "Show hidden files and folders". This shows files and folders even if they are marked as . On the other hand, files that ...

JeffDav's story of a program that didn't like it when he told it where to install reminded me of another program that we dealt with during Windows 95 development. This was a big-name program developed by one of the biggest-of-the-big name software companies. Let's give this program the imaginary name "LitWare". Its setup program asked you w...

Although Windows is centered around, well, windows, a window itself is not a cheap object. What's more, the tight memory constraints of systems of 1985 forced various design decisions. Let's take for example the design of the list box control. In a modern design, you might design the list box control as accepting a list of child windows, each of w...

In beta versions of Windows XP, there was special code in the window manager to give every window a link in the upper right corner called "Comments?" which if clicked on displayed a dialog that allowed you to submit feedback to Microsoft about that window. Since this was a beta release, there was no anonymity when you submitted feedback. (You...