The Old New Thing

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May 25, 2026

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A hypothetical redesign of System.Diagnostics.Process to avoid confusion over properties that are valid only when you are the one who called Start

Raymond Chen

Putting them in a place that can access only if you call <CODE>Start</CODE>.

May 22, 2026

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Why do you say that a COM STA thread must pump messages if I see sample code creating STA threads and not pumping messages?

Raymond Chen

You need to pump messages when idle, but maybe you are never idle.

May 21, 2026

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How do I use Win32 structures from the Windows Runtime?

Raymond Chen

Trick question: You can't. But maybe you can fake it.

May 20, 2026

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The classic TreeView control lets me sort by name or by lParam, but why not both?

Raymond Chen

You need to arrange to get one from the other.

May 19, 2026

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What is the history of the ERROR_ARENA_TRASHED error code?

Raymond Chen

The storage control blocks were destroyed.

May 18, 2026

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Just shows that nobody cares about debugging the parity flag any more

Raymond Chen

Reported incorrectly since the day it was written.

May 15, 2026

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The case of the Create­File­Mapping that always reported ERROR_ALREADY_EXISTS

Raymond Chen

Maybe because it already exists?

May 14, 2026

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A constant-space linear-time algorithm for deleting all but the 10 most recent files in a directory

Raymond Chen

Using data structures you already knew.

May 13, 2026

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The case of the hang when the user changed keyboard layouts

Raymond Chen

Keeping things moving.

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