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The Old New Thing
Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.
Latest posts

Why does INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE cast through a LONG_PTR
first?
LONG_PTR
first? 
To ensure that the proper sign extension happens.

We’ll fly you to Atlanta, Texas, and getting to your hotel in Atlanta, Georgia is your problem

Reading the fine print.

A note on the USB-to-PS/2 mouse adapter that came with Microsoft mouse devices

It's a purely mechanical adapter that relies on smarts in the mouse itself.

On how different Windows ABIs choose how to pass 32-bit values in 64-bit registers

Surveying the options and looking for commonalities.

The case of the critical section that let multiple threads enter a block of code

It had one job.

What could cause a memory corruption bug to disappear in safe mode?

A simplified execution environment means fewer things that you can stumble over.

You can’t simulate keyboard input with PostMessage, revisited

If it didn't go through the input system, it only looks like input as much as the app allows itself to be fooled.

Why didn’t Windows 95 setup use a miniature version of Windows 95 as its fallback GUI?

Avoiding an interim GUI environment.

Dubious security vulnerability: A program does not run correctly if you run it the wrong way

So what did you expect?