The Old New Thing

Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.

Latest posts

The case of a program that crashed on its first instruction
Nov 8, 2024
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The case of a program that crashed on its first instruction

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Didn't even make it out of the gate.

Why do I observe reads from a memory-mapped file when writing large blocks?
Nov 7, 2024
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Why do I observe reads from a memory-mapped file when writing large blocks?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

The CPU doesn't see the entire write at once.

How do I declare an operator overload for my Windows Runtime class?
Nov 6, 2024
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How do I declare an operator overload for my Windows Runtime class?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

That's not something expressible in the Windows Runtime.

What’s the difference between Display size and Screen size in the Windows 95 display control panel?
Nov 5, 2024
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What’s the difference between Display size and Screen size in the Windows 95 display control panel?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

No meaningful difference, though others have created a difference.

On the limits of time travel in the face of undefined behavior in C
Nov 4, 2024
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On the limits of time travel in the face of undefined behavior in C

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

C imposes some constraints, but the principle is mostly still there.

On locale-aware substring matching, either case-sensitive or case-insensitive
Nov 1, 2024
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On locale-aware substring matching, either case-sensitive or case-insensitive

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

It's surprisingly complicated, but fortunately, somebody has done it for you.

What has case distinction but is neither uppercase nor lowercase?
Oct 31, 2024
23
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What has case distinction but is neither uppercase nor lowercase?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

It has one foot in each world but belongs to neither.

I have enabled “take ownership” permission, but I still cannot obtain write access
Oct 30, 2024
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I have enabled “take ownership” permission, but I still cannot obtain write access

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Taking ownership is only one part of gaining write access.

Reverse-engineering what a “short” section is
Oct 29, 2024
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Reverse-engineering what a “short” section is

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

The long and short of it all.