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A common reaction to my explanation of whether dragging a file will result in a move or copy was that there should be a setting that lets you change the algorithm by which Explorer decides whether you want to move or copy. There are a few reasons why this is a bad idea. First, if there were such a setting, then it removes some of the predictabil...

Another thought experiment when thinking through a feature.

In response to the news that is so dangerous, at least one person has called for Visual Studio to revoke support for such a dangerous function, considering the continued support for the function grounds for holding the compiler manufacturer liable for any defects in programs compiled with that compiler. Well, for one thing, while it's true that...

Probably the biggest advantage of 64-bit Windows is not the larger registers but rather the expansive 64-bit address space. Recall that even when the /3GB switch is set, 32-bit programs receive only 2GB of address space unless they indicate their willingness to cope with addresses above 2GB by passing the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE flag. This flag means t...

When a program starts or when a DLL is loaded, the loader builds a dependency tree of all the DLLs referenced by that program/DLL, that DLL's dependents, and so on. It then determines the correct order in which to initialize those DLLs so that no DLL is initialized until after all the DLLs upon which it is dependent have been initialized. (Of cour...

One of my colleagues was unpacking one of those $30,000 quad-processor more-memory-than-you-know-what-to-do-with super-server computers. The kind that require their own electrical substation. And it came with an AOL CD. It's like buying a Lexus and finding a 35-cents-off coupon in the glove compartment. Apparently, one of the questions AOL tech ...

I'm kind of surprised at how much people reacted to my previous dead computer story. I guess there's an audience for stories about dead computers. Today's dead computer is my Sony Vaio PCG-Z505LE laptop, with a 600MHz processor and 192MB of RAM. Certainly a big step up from that 486/50 with 12MB of RAM. Laptop computers have a comparatively shor...

A bunch of us were going through some Windows crashes that people sent in by clicking the "Send Error Report" button in the crash dialog. And there were huge numbers of them that made no sense whatsoever. For example, there would be code sequences like this: Yet when we looked at the error report, the and registers were equal! There were othe...

My building was scheduled for a carpet replacement—in all my years at Microsoft, I think this is the first time this has ever happened to a building I was in—so we all had to pack up our things so the carpeters could get clear access to the floor. You go through all the pain of an office move (packing all your things) but don't get the ...

On one of our internal mailing lists, someone was wondering why their expensive four-processor computer appeared to be using only one of its processors. From Task Manager's performance tab, the chart showed that the first processor was doing all the work and the other three processors were sitting idle. Using Task Manager to set each process's proc...