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...

.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...

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...

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...

This is another frequently asked question. If you search google how to detect .Net Framework , this( http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;%5BLN%5D;315291 ) page ranks very high. Ignore all the details in the KB articles. It basically...

This is another common asked question. But it is a Win32 question. In Windows GUI applications and Console applications are very different. GUI applications have at least one window, and a message loop, but no standard in/out/error. Console applications...

This question comes up from time to time. The answer is, there is no explicit numeric thread id for managed thread today in .Net framework. Now if you do need a numeric thread id for whatever reason, you can use System.Threading.Thread.GetHashCode()....

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....

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...

Learned a hard lesson. Contention between GetPrivateProfileString and WritePrivateProfileString may cause a deadlock, even for multiple processes. If you intent to Read/Write the same ini file, you have to lock the file yourself. Yes, I know they are...

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...

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...

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...

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....

http://www.davidflanagan.com/blog/000017.html I wonder if someone has time to the same analysis on .Net framework. I bet it will be much longer:)

Another commonly asked question. There are many ways to detect if a given file is a managed assembly or not. For example, in VS.Net 2002/2003, dumpbin has an option /clrheader. It will dump the CLR header for you if the file is a managed assembly....

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...

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...

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...

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...

Speaking of file name inspired me to write another post about assembly name. Windows supports long file path since Win95 time. It has a MAX_PATH limit, which is defined as 260. Prior to .Net era, you seldom see long file name. If you poke around...

This is another often-asked question. As of today, there is no managed answer. mscoree!GetCORSystemDirectory returns the directory of where .Net framework is installed. It is documented here ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library...

.Net framework has a great feature called delay signing. Every strongly named assembly has a public key, and a strong name hash stored in the metadata. At runtime CLR uses the public key to verify the strong name hash to make sure the assembly is not...

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...

In my last post I talked about how to detect .Net framework installed in your local machine. This is another .Net framework detection. But not for you, it is for web servers. Suppose you browse some web site. How does that web site know if you have installed...