The Old New Thing

Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.

Latest posts

Jun 22, 2026
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In memory of the man who put red and green squiggles under words

Raymond Chen

Starting in Word and expanding to nearly every other word processor, and even things that aren't word processors.

Jun 19, 2026
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What does it mean when the bottom bit of my HMODULE is set?

Raymond Chen

A special kind of <CODE>HMODULE</CODE>.

Jun 18, 2026
Post comments count 4
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Why doesn’t Get­Last­Input­Info() return info for the user I’m impersonating?

Raymond Chen

It doesn't care about impersonation, says so on the tin.

Jun 17, 2026
Post comments count 6
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Windows stack limit checking retrospective, follow-up

Raymond Chen

Choosing the register to use to pass the desired stack allocation size.

Jun 16, 2026
Post comments count 6
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Retrofitting the WM_COPY­DATA message onto Windows 3.1

Raymond Chen

It was carefully designed to be trivial.

Jun 15, 2026
Post comments count 28
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The time the x86 emulator team found code so bad that they fixed it during emulation

Raymond Chen

Offensive content in the eyes of a software engineer.

Jun 12, 2026
Post comments count 8
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How can I schedule work on a thread pool with low latency?

Raymond Chen

The thread pool is designed for throughput, not latency.

Jun 11, 2026
Post comments count 5
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Understanding the rationale behind a rule when trying to circumvent it

Raymond Chen

I mean, technically <I>I</I> didn't do it.

Jun 10, 2026
Post comments count 7
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What’s the opposite of Clip­Cursor that lets me exclude the cursor from a region?

Raymond Chen

There is no such feature, but you can just exclude it virtually.