Junfeng Zhang's Windows Programming Notes

The question is, when your assembly is executing, how do you figure out the assembly version and file version of your own assembly? Your assembly (while executing) can be returned from System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly(). So: Assembly...

So my submission in gotdotnet.com sample finally gets approved. Here is the link to download it. http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/Resources/Default.aspx?AFXPath=/Resource[@ResourceId='F0CECD72-7287-4891-8D5E-5763AD14C2FD'] ] This is a tool to...

Eric Lippert discussed how Windows Script Host output unicode in console for NT based OSes here . Of course, every console based applications have the same problem. This includes gacutil. In 1.0 and 1.1, gacutil translate everything to ANSI, then...

So I was playing CLR Profiler lately. It comes with a very good document written in word. It is really a simple document with text, and a lot snapshots. The document is about 11M. When I finished reading the document, I noticed my machine kind of slows...

I really hate applications doing thing on my back. That is why I rename %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Real\Update_OB\realsched.exe to realsched.exe.bak. And I just find out something called jusched.exe is running on my back. tlist shows it is from...

One of the biggest difference in Win32 and .Net is probing. In Win32 (and *nix), OS loader looks for binaries in directories specified in %PATH% environment variable. In .Net, we probes GAC, and app base. That is it. We do not honor %PATH% environment...

I frequently see people ask the same question in microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.clr and microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.performance. Which one has better performance, one big assembly or several small assemblies? Strictly from a performance point...

We had a rather heated internal disccusion about managed code reliability, and one of discussion is finalizer. Chris Brumme wrote a very long reply revealed the details of finalization and why it is not reliable. The great thing is, he posted it in his...

Question and answers about cost of calling unmanaged code from managed C++. From: Subject: RE: Cost of calling unmanaged code from managed C++ The biggest difference in performance is the cost of parameter marshalling. With C++ because...

Alan discussed unification policy at his latest blog . As usual he puts a lot of though in his blog. Great read.

Did you use the new MSN explorer? It is definitely one of the most beautiful softwares I have ever used.

Another question in internal discussion. Here is one reply: From: Subject: RE: DLL Injection DLL injection is never safe. You're talking about squirting code into a process that was never designed, built, or tested by the process...

This question comes up in internal discussion from time to time. The reason is, the semantics of directory copy is not well defined. It largely depends on what you need. Here are some questions you need to answer before you go implement one: 1....

I don't work in VirtualPC team but I use their product almost everyday and I love it. So I think I should run some advertisement for them;) news coverage can be found here http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-5161193.html?tag=nefd_top .

This comes up in an internal discussion about MAX_PATH limit. People do mention that the core file services supports syntax like \\?\ for path longer than MAX_PATH. The caveat is that file name with \\?\ is not canonicalized by the OS. This can lead to...

This question is asked in an internal discussion. And here is the answer from CLR team. From: Subject: RE: How is lock keyword of C# implemented? At the core, it’s typically one „lock cmpxchg“ instruction (for x86) for entry, and...

So the other day I received an email from a colleague. He had an assembly load failure. And the fusion binding log looks like following: *** Assembly Binder Log Entry (2/10/2004 @ 5:41:08 PM) *** The operation failed. Bind result: hr = 0x80070035....

I have LCD at home, and I turn on ClearType from Control Panel->Display->Appearance->Effects. But I never know I can tune the ClearType setting. Visit this page http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearTypeInfo.mspx to tune your ClearType...

Suzanne blogs again! This time, she is helping you on diagnose MissingMethodException . Of course, whatever she tries to help you, she can't live without fusion log. So what exactly is fusion log? Remember what fusion's role is in assembly binding...

Every assembly has an identity, which includes name, version, culture, and public key/token. Also every binary in Windows can have a file version. The file version is orthogonal to assembly version, and there is no co-relation at all. You can change them...

So that I got a complain today about foo.exe and foo.dll. The whole story is like this: The tester produces two binaries foo.exe and foo.dll, with the same identity (name, version, culture, public key token). And the tester uses gacutil to install...

AppDomainSetup is a properties bag. It stores various properties that affects binding decision in an appdomain, as well as other decision as well. MSDN documents each properties in AppDomainSetup. But there are a few properties that are not well explained...

After much deviation, finally I returned to fusion land. Hope you enjoy it.

.Net Framework has a feature called Shadow Copy . When shadow copy is enabled on an appdomain, assemblies loaded in that appdomain will be copied to a shadow copy cache directory, and will be used from there. This is great because the original file is...

Another shocking discovery. WritePrivateProfileString hangs because AntiVirus is accessing the ini file. I really don't know what to do now.