The Old New Thing

Why does my program crash if I terminate a thread that is waiting to enter a critical section? It never got the critical section, so who cares?

Raymond ChenNovember 1, 2019Nov 1, 201911/1/19

But we care that it's still waiting.

For one internal build, Windows 95 contained an evil message

Raymond ChenOctober 31, 2019Oct 31, 201910/31/19

Another prank from the user interface team.

The program “G” is preventing you from shutting down

Raymond ChenOctober 30, 2019Oct 30, 201910/30/19

Minding your character set.

If you suppress GDI+ background thread, then you are expected to pump messages yourself

Raymond ChenOctober 29, 2019Oct 29, 201910/29/19

That stuff is now happening on your thread.

Did you hear that story about Bill Gates?: A PR person’s view

Raymond ChenOctober 28, 2019Oct 28, 201910/28/19

They've heard them all.

Why does Format­Message say that %0 terminates the message without a trailing newline? Is it secretly adding newlines?

Raymond ChenOctober 25, 2019Oct 25, 201910/25/19

Well, it's not Format­Message that's adding the newline.

If you want to terminate on an unexpected exception, then don’t sniff at every exception; just let the process terminate

Raymond ChenOctober 24, 2019Oct 24, 201910/24/19

Get the stack before it unwinds.

Why can’t I create a “Please wait” dialog from a background thread to inform the user that the main UI thread is busy?

Raymond ChenOctober 23, 2019Oct 23, 201910/23/19

Reversal of fortune.

What’s the difference between the hotkeys F6 and Alt+F6?

Raymond ChenOctober 22, 2019Oct 22, 201910/22/19

Switching between things, but different things.

When I tell the file or folder picker that I want only file system files and folders, why does it still show virtual folders?

Raymond ChenOctober 21, 2019Oct 21, 201910/21/19

Because there might be a file hiding under it.