The Old New Thing

Tips/Support - The Old New Thing

What is this Xerox directory doing in Program Files?

November 16, 2004 Nov 16, 2004 11/16/04
Raymond Chen
If you go snooping around, you may find an empty directory. What's that for? This directory is being watched by Windows File Protection, because it needs to protect the file should it ever show up. (Why does the directory have to exist in order for Windows File Protection to be able to watch it? I'm told it's a limitation of the Windows ...

Will dragging a file result in a move or a copy?

November 12, 2004 Nov 12, 2004 11/12/04
Raymond Chen
Some people are confused by the seemingly random behavior when you drag a file. Do you get a move or a copy? And you're right to be confused because it's not obvious until you learn the secret. Mind you, this secret hasn't changed since 1989, but an old secret is still a secret just the same. (Worse: An old secret is a compatibility ...

The procedure entry point SHCreateThreadRef could not be located…

October 14, 2004 Oct 14, 2004 10/14/04
Raymond Chen
Some people smarter than me have been working on this problem, and here's what they figured out. First, I'll just reprint their analysis (so that people with the problem and are searching for the solution can find it), and then we can discuss it. Update (18 October 2005): The official version of this document is now available. Please use ...

What does boldface on a menu mean?

September 29, 2004 Sep 29, 2004 09/29/04
Raymond Chen
On many context menus you will see an item in boldface. For example, if you right-click a text file, you will most likely see "Open" in boldface at the top of the mean. What does the boldface mean? The boldface menu item is the default command for that menu. It represents the action that would have occurred if you had double-clicked the item...

Why does my mouse/touchpad sometimes go berzerk?

September 17, 2004 Sep 17, 2004 09/17/04
Raymond Chen
Each time you move a PS/2-style mouse, the mouse send three bytes to the computer. For the sake of illustration, let's say the three bytes are x, y, and buttons. The operating system sees this byte stream and groups them into threes: x y b x y b x y b x y b Now suppose the cable is a bit jiggled loose and one of the "y"s gets lost. ...

Monitor giving you a headache? Check the refresh rate.

June 25, 2004 Jun 25, 2004 06/25/04
Raymond Chen
Some people are more sensitive to lower monitor refresh rates than others. Go to the display control panel and click to the Settings tab. From there, click the Advanced button and go to the Monitor tab. From there, you can adjust your screen refresh rate. As a rule of thumb, higher refresh rates are less likely to cause eyestrain. If ...

Verifying that your system files are digitally signed

June 16, 2004 Jun 16, 2004 06/16/04
Raymond Chen
If you want to re-check that the files on your system haven't been tampered with, you can run sigverif (by typing its name into the Start.Run dialog) and tell it to start scanning. (UI note: If you go into the Logging page on the Advanced dialog, you can get trapped where it insists on having a valid log file name even if you didn't ...

How do you undo Minimize All and Show Desktop?

May 28, 2004 May 28, 2004 05/28/04
Raymond Chen
It seems it's not well-known how to undo a Minimize All or a Show Desktop, two operations which I discussed briefly yesterday. To undo a Minimize All, you can right-click the taskbar and select "Undo Minimize All", or at least you used to be able to do that. Minimize All is no longer on the menus, presumably because it ended up ...