Recently I need to add full screen mode for one of my MFC projects. Like what we did usually, my first impression is to hide the tool bar of main frame and expand the size of view. Thus, I need to calculate the system screen size (GetSystemMetrics() API...

Well, when you write your first win32 console application in Visual Studio 2008, you probably just want to click F5 and test if it runs or not. Unfortunately, probably you will get some trouble as I did. I collected three "confusing" errors here. ...

Well, this title looks complicated...actually the story is pretty simple by using an example. For example, you write an application APP_A and the installer of this application needs to leave fingerprint on system's registry keys, so that the other...

Recently I need to write some codes to disable one feature on Windows 7 for an application. For Windows 7, its major number is 6 and minor number is 1 (see this link http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724832(VS.85).aspx ) and thus we can compare...

Recently I am working with Windows Installer and think ProductCode, UpgradeCode and PackageCode are very basic but very important concepts, so I make a conclusion here for references. Both ProductCode and UpgradeCode can be viewed from Property table...

Common scenario is that a developer wrote an application on his/her dev machine A (which has source code, etc), and wants to debug this application's source code when the application is running on the remote machine B. Visual Studio 2008 provides two...

A couple of weeks ago I tried to implement a glass window in C# application. My first thought is to edit the properties of WinForm. For example, I modified the "BackColor" and "Opacity" of the Form and did see the form became transparent and its color...

Besides using Code Analysis (was FxCop), Source Analysis (was StyleCop) and Unit Test Code Coverage tool in Visual Studio IDE, I like some tools shipped in Windows SDK. These tools are very cool. IL Disassembler (ildasm.exe) http://msdn.microsoft...

CTRL + F -- search string/text ESC --- change focus [for example, after you found the string and wanted to read the definition. You need to press this escape key first to change focus. F12 - Go to definition SHIFT + F12 - Find all the references...

As we know, both Visual Studio IDE and its Command Prompt provide build environments to build our C++ applications, but they have some differences. I concluded some features of them as following. (1)In the VS Command Prompt, if you use "/useenv" switch...

Sometimes you will see a managed assembly have both strong name and authenticode signature and are confused about their differences. Simply speaking, they use different mechanisms to help users to judge if the assembly comes from a trustable source. Also...

A few command SQL script (1) Insert multiple records of Table_A to a new Table_B SELECT * INTO Table_B FROM Table_A (2) Insert multiple records of Table_A to an existing table Table_B INSERT INTO Table_B ( Col1 , Col2 , Col3 )...

A few months ago I read two articles on MSDN about the compatibility One is http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/58bc9k67(VS.71).aspx The other is http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/58bc9k67(VS.80).aspx The first link said, “Backward compatibility...

It is not unusual to see a lot of switch statements or multiple if else statements in OO codes. From the view of code maintainability, probably some of such codes need refactoring. Strategy pattern is a good replacement. For example, the old code...

Recently I uninstalled my VS 2008 and tried to install VSTS 2008. Unfortunately I was blocked by a couple of setup errors. Thus, I found a couple of good links/tools. Generally speaking, if we want to uninstall VS 2008 and reinstall a new VS 2008,...

Recently I read the book of "The Definitive Guide to Windows Installer" to understand how Windows Installer works. Seemly it is quite easy to create a launch condition based on a registry search in Orca. We just need to edit three tables: RegLocator...