A peek behind the beep

re: A peek behind the beep

dirk — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 01:39:46 GMT

I wanted to register a application event in my registry this weekend and I was wondered. The default value of the .current key has a REG_EXPAND_SZ type on all my systems. If I change a wav file association with the control panel applet the type of the default value was changed to REG_SZ. After that it was impossible for me to play this system sound via PlaySound. I tried this on my Windows XP SP2 32Bit and 64Bit Edition. It's very mystic.

re: A peek behind the beep

PatriotB — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 22:06:33 GMT

Ah, so that's why the apps are all exe names: to enable PlaySound to look up the events itself. I've always used GUIDs to identify my individual apps, and manually look up the file names to play myself.

re: A peek behind the beep

Larry Osterman [MSFT] — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 18:53:51 GMT

Adrian,
That's only a problem if it's a DLL trying to play the sound, it's not if it's an executable. And for the vast majority of cases for Windows, it's the executable that's playing the sound.

I don't know about you, but I don't have that many collisions in executable names on my machine.

re: A peek behind the beep

Adrian — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 18:39:28 GMT

It seems unfortunate that these are keyed by executable name. That makes collisions pretty likely.

re: A peek behind the beep

Larry Osterman [MSFT] — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 17:37:43 GMT

Dean, yup. In Vista, we're planning on adding the DispFileName to the events and deprecating the event labels entirely (it's only needed for MUI).

Phylyp, this is why I'm documenting this here (and will be talking to the MSDN people about documenting it better). Adding an API to manage this is installer-unfriendly, so we need to make the registry stuff clear.

re: A peek behind the beep

Phylyp — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 12:56:52 GMT

Larry,
It would be good if you guys (i.e. MSFT) could provide one (or more) .REG files that will insert comments into various registry keys. The comments will have URLs to the appropriate MSDN/KB articles for the keys/values.

IMHO, this would be of use to developers/power users (like me!) who trawl through the registry (in express violation of Raymond Chen's advice). Cases when there exists an appropriate API to modify the values could be indicated, with the URL to that API's MSDN documentation.

Do you think this encourage devs to use the registry in the right way, or will it merely provide a small safety-net against weird manipulations?

~Phylyp

re: A peek behind the beep

Phylyp — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 12:52:01 GMT

Larry,
It would be good if you guys (i.e. MS) could prepare a reg file that would automatically insert comments into various registry keys, where the comments provide URLs to MSDN/KB articles, for that developers/power users who trawl through the registry (like me!).

Raymond Chen also blogs a lot about users digging into the registry to read/change settings (instead of using the appropriate APIs): in these cases the comment could be on the lines of "Touch me not", and a URL to the appropriate API to use.

~Phylyp

re: A peek behind the beep

Dean Harding — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 09:17:06 GMT

So is the only difference between the EventLabels mapping and assigning a default value to the alias key the fact that EventLabels handles the DispFileName stuff?

Why make a whole new key to handle that when you could have just as easily added the value to the alias key? Not to mention making it a flat list, meaning you've got to make sure your alias names are unique... just seems like an odd design to me.

re: A peek behind the beep

Larry Osterman [MSFT] — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 08:41:58 GMT

Actually that was intentional to show an example of an app registration (MSN Messenger).

re: A peek behind the beep

jon — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 04:39:04 GMT

Should that MSNMSGR\ key be in there? That would just be sounds for messenger wouldn't it?