Dev Blogs
Statements made in a general sense may have exceptions even if such exceptions are not explicitly acknowledged. Example: "Dogs have four legs." There are dogs which do not have four legs, but as a general rule, dogs have four legs. Statements are not independently fact-checked. They are based on personal experience and recollection, augmented by i...
In the Windows division, as with any other product group, there is a common "bag of tools" that people tend to rely on to get through the day. Occasionally, somebody will encounter a problem with one of these tools. When I run Program Q, I get the message XYZ, and then it appears to get stuck in an infinite loop allocating more and more memor...
When you use Explorer to copy a folder, and the folder already exists at the destination, Explorer merges the contents of the folder being copied with the folder that is already there. Why was this behavior chosen instead of replacing the existing folder? My colleague Bob Day explains.¹ Nitpicker's Corner ¹Although this statement is w...
One of my colleagues pointed out that my web site is listed in the references section of this whitepaper. It scares me that I'm being used as formal documentation because that is explicitly what this web site isn't. I wrote back, I really need to put a disclaimer on my web site. FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY Remember, this is a blog. The op...
Far too often I'll get email like this: From: X Subject: 27183 Have you started looking at this one yet? It may surprise you to learn that I do not memorize all my bug numbers. Please include a brief description of the bug in your message so I have a clue what you're talking about. The bug title is a good start. It's like going to a doctor an...
In the category of dubious vulnerability, I submit the following (paraphrased) report: I discovered that if I take an EXE file and corrupt its header, then when I try to run the EXE file, the process starts up and then crashes. I used the information in the crash dialog to direct further investigations, noting that the specific crash location co...
Back in 1993, there was an internal presentation discussing the various new features that were being added to that fancy new version of Windows that ultimately came to be known as Windows 95. In the GDI section, one of the new features was listed as "Enchanced metafiles". When the slide went up, you could hear the scattered titters of laught...
Somebody wanted to append an extension to all files in a directory and couldn't find a way to do this type of bulk rename in Explorer. On the other hand, it's pretty simple from the command prompt: The person then asked, "Can we get this and other multi-file operations added to Explorer?" "There should be a way to rename a large number of fi...
If you're going to add a topic to the Suggestion Box,¹ at least do the courtesy of researching the question before asking it. It takes me an hour to answer each question; it's only fair that you spend ten minutes making it a good question. For example, one entry in the Suggestion Box asked for the story behind the hotkey. But even the most ...
Commenter Myron A. Semack asks how much faster Windows would be if you took out the backward compatibility stuff. Myron is so anxious about this that he asked the question a second time. Asking a question twice typically counts as a reason not to answer it, but since I had already written up the answer, I figured I'd post it anyway. Oh great, ...