The Old New Thing

Why does the copy dialog give me the incorrect total size of the files being copied?

January 20, 2015 Jan 20, 2015 01/20/15

Raymond Chen

It's all a misunderstanding.

Why does Outlook use a semicolon to separate multiple recipients by default?

January 19, 2015 Jan 19, 2015 01/19/15

Raymond Chen

In triplicate, please.

How did that program manage to pin itself to my taskbar when I installed it?

December 30, 2014 Dec 30, 2014 12/30/14

Raymond Chen

Occasionally, somebody will notice that upon installing a program, it managed to pin itself to the taskbar. But just like there is no function, there is also no function, and for the same reason: Because applications would abuse it and auto-pin themselves because they are so awesome, and so that the developer could get a nice bonus. In ...

How can I let my child use an app that I bought from the Windows Store?

December 24, 2014 Dec 24, 2014 12/24/14

Raymond Chen

If you buy an app from the Windows Store, you can make it available to other users on the same Windows PC. This is useful if you, say, buy an app for your child to use. Here's how you do it. (This is all explained on the Windows Store blog, but I've converted it into a step-by-step and updated it for Windows 8.1.) First, sign on as yourself ...

If you set up roaming profiles, you are expected to set up each machine identically, for the most part

December 16, 2014 Dec 16, 2014 12/16/14

Raymond Chen

A customer discovered the following behavior when they set up roaming user profiles on their domain. Consider two machines, 1 and 2. An application A is installed on machine 1, but not machine 2. A user with a roaming profile logs onto machine 1 and pins application A to the taskbar. That user then logs off ...

What is the difference between Full Windows Touch Support and Limited Touch Support?

November 25, 2014 Nov 25, 2014 11/25/14

Raymond Chen

In the System control panel and in the PC Info section of the PC & Devices section of PC Settings, your device's pen and touch support can be reported in a variety of ways. Here is the matrix: The meaning of No touch and Single touch are clear, but if a device supports multiple touch points, what makes the system report it as having ...

File version information does not appear in the property sheet for some files

November 18, 2014 Nov 18, 2014 11/18/14

Raymond Chen

A customer reported that file version information does not appear on the Details page of the property sheet which appears when you right-click the file and select Properties. They reported that the problem began in Windows 7. The reason that the file version information was not appearing is that the file's extension was . Older ...

Is there a way to disable a specific balloon notification without disabling all of them?

October 14, 2014 Oct 14, 2014 10/14/14

Raymond Chen

There is a group policy called Turn off all balloon notifications, but what if you want to turn off only one specific notification? The taskbar does not offer fine-grained policy control over balloon notifications. All you have is the giant sledgehammer that turns off all of them. If there is a specific balloon you want to disable, you have ...

Why does the timestamp of a file increase by up to 2 seconds when I copy it to a USB thumb drive?

September 3, 2014 Sep 3, 2014 09/3/14

Raymond Chen

We saw some time ago that the FAT file system records timestamps in local time to only two-second resolution. This means that copying a file to a FAT-formatted device (typically a floppy drive or a USB thumb drive) can increase the timestamp by up two seconds. And even after the file is copied, the timestamp is not stable. The timestamp ...

Where does the Installed Updates control panel get the install date from?

August 27, 2014 Aug 27, 2014 08/27/14

Raymond Chen

A corporate customer wanted to know where the Installed Updates control panel gets the Installed On information from, because they found that the values were always set to the current date regardless of when the update was actually installed. The algorithm goes roughly like this: First, ask MSI what date the update was installed by calling ...