Windows SDK Support Team Blog

#define _WIN32_WINNT

OpenService() fails on a service marked for deletion on Windows 10, Version 1703 (OS build 15063)

OpenService() fails with error code 1060 or ERROR_SERVICE_DOES_NOT_EXIST when a service is marked...

Author: Frank K [MSFT] Date: 08/24/2017

Leveraging Exploit Guard in Windows Insider Build to Easily Audit Your Code

If you are a software developer and are looking to improve upon the security compliance of your...

Author: Chris Lewis [MSFT] Date: 08/07/2017

Why can't I restore files even when I have backup/restore privileges enabled?

Backup and restore privileges allow some, but not all, types of access checks to be bypassed....

Author: Chris Lewis [MSFT] Date: 12/12/2016

Visual Studio Team Services and Personal Microsoft Accounts

Visual Studio Team Services and Personal Microsoft Accounts 10/5/2016 Update - Due to the...

Author: Jeff Lambert Date: 09/29/2016

Why does SqlDataReader behave differently with Set-PSDebug enabled?

We recently had someone ask why their PowerShell script stopped working correctly when they enabled...

Author: Chris Lewis [MSFT] Date: 09/27/2016

Hotfix List for February 2016

Hi guys, Jeff here from the Windows SDK team. Here are the Windows hotfixes for February 2016....

Author: Jeff Lambert Date: 02/10/2016

Hotfix for January 2016

Jeff here from the SDK team. This month there is only 1 public hotfix because of the holidays....

Author: Jeff Lambert Date: 01/13/2016

Why CryptCATAdminCalcHashFromFileHandle fails with a seemingly unexpected error code

CryptCATAdminCalcHashFromFileHandle can fail when evaluating a file path to an executable while...

Author: Chris Lewis [MSFT] Date: 01/05/2016

Hotfixes for December 2015

Jeff here, from the SDK team with the Holiday Hotfixes. Happy patching. KB2920591 High CPU usage and...

Author: Jeff Lambert Date: 12/09/2015

SHA-1 Code Signing Deprecation in Windows beginning January 1, 2016

This post is to help the product team spread the word on Windows (version 7 and higher) and Windows...

Author: Frank K [MSFT] Date: 11/20/2015

Using SHA256 with the SignedXml Class

With the industry moving away from SHA1 including Microsoft (see...

Author: Carlos Lopez - MSFT Date: 11/14/2015

Hotfixes for November 2015

Jeff here from the SDK team. Here are the hotfixes for November 2015. KB3040017 XPS driver is slower...

Author: Jeff Lambert Date: 11/11/2015

Windows Hotfixes for October 2015

Jeff here from the Windows SDK team. Here is the list of October 2015 Hotfixes [Drum roll,...

Author: Jeff Lambert Date: 10/14/2015

Virtual Desktop Switching in Windows 10

  Windows 10 introduces a new concept (for Windows anyway) called Virtual Desktops. ...

Author: Chris Lewis [MSFT] Date: 09/10/2015

Windows Hotfix List for September 2015

Jeff here from the SDK team. It is that time of the month again, here are September’s...

Author: Jeff Lambert Date: 09/09/2015

Logon as a user without a password

In Windows, it is possible to logon as a different domain user without any credentials. This is...

Author: Frank K [MSFT] Date: 08/28/2015

LogonUser + LOGON32_LOGON_NEW_CREDENTIALS, What is this flag used for?

A new flag was introduced in Windows VISTA for LogonUser(), LOGON32_LOGON_NEW_CREDENTIALS....

Author: Frank K [MSFT] Date: 08/25/2015

.NET Hotfix Rollup for August 2015

Jeff here, There is a .NET hotfix rollup for August. 3078646 Issues that this hotfix rollup resolves...

Author: Jeff Lambert Date: 08/13/2015

Windows August 2015 Hotfix List

Hey guys. Jeff here from the Windows SDK team. Here are this month’s hotfixes. KB2966038...

Author: Jeff Lambert Date: 08/12/2015

Hotfixes and Patches for Windows for July 2015

Hey SDK friends, Jeff here with the July 2015 Hotfix List 3070714 "0x000000B8" Stop error during...

Author: Jeff Lambert Date: 07/15/2015

.NET Hotfix Rollups for June

Jeff here from the Windows SDK Team. Just a quick blog with a few .NET Hotfix rollup articles today....

Author: Jeff Lambert Date: 06/25/2015

The Real Hotfix List of June 2015

Hey guys, Jeff here from the Windows SDK team. It is June and school’s out for the year and to...

Author: Jeff Lambert Date: 06/11/2015

FileSystemWatcher Fencing(Part 1)

  This post is a follow up to the FileSystemWatcher Follies post.  I received a lot of...

Author: Chris Lewis [MSFT] Date: 06/04/2015

What is up with "The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000142)" error?

You've probably seen this error before in Windows at one time or another. Somebody launched calc.exe...

Author: Frank K [MSFT] Date: 06/03/2015

Winsock’s Listen() Backlog Offers More Flexibility In Windows 8+

Jeff here from the SDK team. A customer was writing a high performance computing type application...

Author: Jeff Lambert Date: 06/01/2015

Printing successfully using impersonation from a 32-bit application on a 64-bit system

There is a known limitation with Windows x64 systems where 32-bit processes fail to print from a...

Author: Isamu Shimada [MSFT] Date: 05/19/2015

FileSystemWatcher Follies

  System.IO.FileSystemWatcher is a handy class that can be used to monitor directories for some...

Author: Chris Lewis [MSFT] Date: 05/19/2015

How to obtain the list of visible columns in a shell view

I was recently looking into how to obtain the list of columns displayed in the shell view for a...

Author: Dave Anderson-MSFT Date: 05/18/2015

Hotfix Releases for Windows: May 2015

Here are the Windows hotfix releases for May 2015 KB3042839 Mstscax.dll file leaks handles on a...

Author: Nathan Manis Date: 05/14/2015

Windows Hotfix List for April 2015

Jeff here, from the SDK team with the better late than never edition of the April 2015 Windows...

Author: Jeff Lambert Date: 04/21/2015

Troubleshooting "Access Denied" errors

Anyone who has used Windows has encountered the dreaded "Access Denied" error. (AKA error code 5 or...

Author: Frank K [MSFT] Date: 03/24/2015

How to register for File Dialog notifications from Shell namespace extension

If you are implementing a shell namespace extension and want to know when a file system item in your...

Author: Isamu Shimada [MSFT] Date: 03/24/2015

Accidental Denial of Service through Inefficient Program Design Part 2 – Incorrectly Implementing Interfaces

  There are few things that are more annoying as a user than to have the performance of a...

Author: Chris Lewis [MSFT] Date: 03/17/2015

Hotfix Releases for Windows: March 2015

    Here are the Windows hotfix releases for March 2015   KB2688074   An...

Author: Nathan Manis Date: 03/12/2015

An OPAQUEKEYBLOB exported via CryptExportKey on Windows 7 is incompatible with Windows 8.1

I recently ran into a customer having decryption problems on Windows 8.1. The data was encrypted...

Author: Carlos Lopez - MSFT Date: 03/08/2015

Accidental Denial of Service through Inefficient Program Design Part 1 – Watching WMI Events for Object Creation (e.g. Win32_Process)

  There are few things that are more annoying as a user than to have the performance of a...

Author: Chris Lewis [MSFT] Date: 02/16/2015

Hotfixes for February 2015

  Here are the Windows hotfixes for February 2015. 3031420  "100060" time-out...

Author: Jeff Lambert Date: 02/11/2015

Reducing the time to perform a CRL check on isolated networks

    Hi everyone,   Writing today to pass along a solution to reduce the time for...

Author: Nathan Manis Date: 02/10/2015

C# and Fastcall - How to make them work together without C++/CLI (Shellcode!)

I recently ran into a situation where code had to meet the following requirements: C# language only...

Author: Chris Lewis [MSFT] Date: 02/09/2015

Hotfix List for January 2015 [Short]

Jeff here from the SDK team. This month has a very short list. 3009980 Computer freezes when the...

Author: Jeff Lambert Date: 01/14/2015

WLAN Programming How-To Tips and Tricks Including Using It in C#

Questions concerning the wireless local area network APIs have been coming up a lot recently often...

Author: Chris Lewis [MSFT] Date: 01/09/2015

RDP and CredMan

One common question asked by our customer is how to programmatically store credentials for...

Author: Frank K [MSFT] Date: 01/02/2015

Using multiple monitors programmatically from an RDP Active X control.

In Windows VISTA, Span mode was introduced. This allowed a Remote Desktop session to span across all...

Author: Frank K [MSFT] Date: 12/31/2014

DNSQuery() Sample To Loop Through Multiple IP Addresses

Jeff from the Windows SDK team here. I had a customer that wanted to just find the IP address that...

Author: Jeff Lambert Date: 12/17/2014

Example impact of Microsoft Accounts on Windows APIs in Windows 8/8.1

Windows 8 introduced the ability for a user to logon to their desktop with their Microsoft Account....

Author: Frank K [MSFT] Date: 12/12/2014

Hotfix List For December 2014 [Not 2015]

Jeff here from the SDK team. Here is a list of this month’s hotfixes, the Yuletide edition....

Author: Jeff Lambert Date: 12/10/2014

How to get notified when going in and out of connected standby from a Windows Service?

Always on Connected Standby (AOAC) was introduced in Windows 8.  Here is the definition as described...

Author: Frank K [MSFT] Date: 12/02/2014

The mysteries of WindowsPrincipal.IsInRole

WindowsPrincipal.IsInRole method is defined as the following in MSDN...

Author: Frank K [MSFT] Date: 12/01/2014

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