The Old New Thing

Why can’t you drop directly onto a taskbar button?

November 24, 2004 Nov 24, 2004 11/24/04

Raymond Chen

If you drag a object and drop it onto a taskbar button, you get an error message that says, You cannot drop an item onto a button on the taskbar. However, if you drag the item over a button without releasing the mouse button, the window will open after a moment, allowing you to drop the item inside the window. Why doesn't the taskbar ...

Asking questions where the answer is unreliable anyway

November 15, 2004 Nov 15, 2004 11/15/04

Raymond Chen

Here are some questions and then explanations why you can't do anything meaningful with the answer anyway even if you could get an answer in the first place. "How can I find out how many outstanding references there are to a shared memory object?" Even if there were a way to find out, the answer you get would be instantly wrong anyway ...

Why does Windows not recognize my USB device as the same device if I plug it into a different port?

November 10, 2004 Nov 10, 2004 11/10/04

Raymond Chen

You may have noticed that if you take a USB device and plug it into your computer, Windows recognizes it and configures it. Then if you unplug it and replug it into a different USB port, Windows gets a bout of amnesia and thinks that it's a completely different device instead of using the settings that applied when you plugged it in last time...

Sometimes you can’t read the text under the cursor

October 27, 2004 Oct 27, 2004 10/27/04

Raymond Chen

I had previously written on how you can retrieve the text under the cursor, and you may have noticed that it produces mixed results. It works great with some programs but not with others. It depends on the program in question. Some programs were written with greater attention to supporting screen readers than others. Internet Explorer, for ...

The strangest way of detecting Windows NT

October 26, 2004 Oct 26, 2004 10/26/04

Raymond Chen

A colleague of mine nominated this code for Function of the Year. (This is the same person who was the first to report that a Windows beta used a suspect URL.) I have to admit that this code is pretty impressive. Of all the ways to check the operating system, you have to agree that sniffing at an undocumented implementation detail of memory...

Dispatching items collected from the suggestion box

October 13, 2004 Oct 13, 2004 10/13/04

Raymond Chen

Okay, I got around to digging through the suggestion box, and today I'm going to dispatch the items that don't require much thought but seemed worthy of reply to some degree. You won't learn much of anything today. Other entries require more thought. Each non-code entry takes me a half hour or so, more if I have to do research (if ...

People lie on surveys and focus groups, often unwittingly

October 12, 2004 Oct 12, 2004 10/12/04

Raymond Chen

Philip Su's discussion of early versions of Microsoft Money triggered a topic that had been sitting in the back of my mind for a while: That people lie on surveys and focus groups, often unwittingly. I can think of three types of lies offhand. (I'm not counting malicious lying; that is, intentional lying for the purpose of undermining the ...

A visual history of spam (and virus) email

September 16, 2004 Sep 16, 2004 09/16/04

Raymond Chen

I have kept every single piece of spam and virus email since mid-1997. Occasionally, it comes in handy, for example, to add naïve Bayesian spam filter to my custom-written email filter. And occasionally I use it to build a chart of spam and virus email. The following chart plots every single piece of spam and virus email that arrived ...