The Old New Thing

What's the difference between autocomplete and dropdown history?

June 20, 2005 Jun 20, 2005 06/20/05

Raymond Chen

One shows things that might be, the other shows things that were. Both of them try to help you type something, but they operate differently (and look confusingly similar). Let's take the second case first. Dropdown history, like you see in the Run dialog, common file dialogs, and the Internet Explorer address bar. The cue for dropdown history...

What is the difference between "Unpin from Start menu" and "Remove from this list"?

June 16, 2005 Jun 16, 2005 06/16/05

Raymond Chen

The list of programs on the left hand side of the Start menu is really two lists. (You can see the separator line between them.) The top list is the so-called "pin list". This is the list of programs you picked to be "locked" to the top of the Start menu. You can "pin" a program by right-clicking it and selecting "Pin to Start menu", or you ...

Why does Explorer eject the CD after you finish burning it?

June 10, 2005 Jun 10, 2005 06/10/05

Raymond Chen

Partly as a convenience, but partly to work around buggy hardware. The developer responsible for CD burning explained it to me. Most CD drives cache information about the disc in their internal memory to improve performance. However, some drives have a bug where they fail to update the cache after the CD has been written to. As a result, you ...

Why does Windows XP SP2 sometimes forget my CD autoplay settings?

June 3, 2005 Jun 3, 2005 06/3/05

Raymond Chen

It didn't forget them; it's just double-checking with you. The developer responsible for CD autoplay in Windows XP SP2 explained it to me. There were two problems with the way Windows XP handled CD autoplay. First, when you installed a new program that included CD autoplay capability, many users didn't know ...

Why does Add or Remove Programs show a large blank space?

May 26, 2005 May 26, 2005 05/26/05

Raymond Chen

Some people have noticed that certain programs cause the Add or Remove Programs control panel to create an enormous amount of blank space. What's going on? These are programs that have bad custom uninstall icon registrations. If you go to the registry key , you'll find a list of programs that have registered for appearing in the Add or ...

If you disable drag/drop on the Start menu, you also disable right-click

March 25, 2005 Mar 25, 2005 03/25/05

Raymond Chen

This is one of those poorly-worded options. In the Start menu configuration dialog, you can choose to uncheck "Enable dragging and dropping". This setting disables drag/drop but also disables right-click context menus. The connection between the two is explained in the Group Policy Editor, but is unfortunately oversimplified in the general-...

Confusion over whether you have Windows XP SP1 or SP2

March 18, 2005 Mar 18, 2005 03/18/05

Raymond Chen

Some support people have asked me why the "About" dialog seems to be kind of schizophrenic as to whether a machine has Windows XP SP1 or SP2. About Windows Microsoft® Windows Version 5.1 (Build 2600.xpsp2.040919-1003 : Service Pack 1) Copyright© 1981-2001 Microsoft Corporation Why does the version string say "xpsp2...

Capturing the current directory from a batch file

January 28, 2005 Jan 28, 2005 01/28/05

Raymond Chen

Sometimes people go to great lengths to get information which is available in a much simpler way. We saw it a few days ago when we found a 200+-line C# program that could be replaced with a 90-byte batch file. Here's another example of a rather roundabout way of capturing the current directory from a batch file. The easy way is to use the...

Control how much network bandwith Automatic Updates will use

January 27, 2005 Jan 27, 2005 01/27/05

Raymond Chen

By default, the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) which is used by Automatic Updates will use idle network bandwidth for downloading updates. This is normally not a problem. One case where it can be a problem is you have a large LAN that shares a single DSL connection. BITS doesn't see that that DSL connection is shared. ...

Why do files and directories with no time/date mess up sorting in Explorer?

January 25, 2005 Jan 25, 2005 01/25/05

Raymond Chen

If you have a file or directory that does not have a last-modified date, you may find that it causes Explorer to sort very strangely. (How do you get a file or directory with no last-modifiied date? It's hard to do; you need the help of an external file system.) Why is this? As we learned earlier, a sort comparison function must impose a ...