Last time out we had a list of the WM_ messages and that got me thinking. Is it possible to see into the future and see what messages will be delivered? The best offered by Windows is the Spy++ model. WH_GETMESSAGE hooks can monitor messages returned by a call to GetMessage or PeekMessage, and WH_CALLWNDPROC(RET) can monitor window procedure activity, but that’s the extent of their powers.
November 16, 2009
November 5, 2009
It Seems to be Some Sort of Communiqué
Just what are all the WM_ message names?
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October 18, 2009
download.error is a Symbol Something Went Wrong
Contrary to the name, download.error is the file name all symbol files downloaded via symsrv start out as. They are eventually molded into the requested symbol file, so the presence of these files after trying to download symbols indicates something went wrong somewhere.
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October 3, 2009
Desktop Heap Monitor for Windows Vista, Server 2008 and 7
Desktop Heap Monitor is a debugging tool that displays the consumption of desktop heaps in the current session. Due to its reliance on undocumented internal structures or maybe just because it’s not an efficient use of time, Microsoft has so far decided not to release an update to allow it to work on OS’s post Server 2003. So as I was doing some work in this area, I’ve created an update to let it do just that.
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August 24, 2009
When Enabling stdcall Put Me in a Bind
A tale of woe where trying to be correct made everything wrong.
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August 8, 2009
Maximizing the Console Window (Completely)
It seems that when it comes to the web, most people are under the impression that the maximum size for a Windows console is what you get when you “maximize” one. It’s time they thought again…
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July 15, 2009
The Application Configuration is Never Correct
If you’ve used Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 and tried to run something you created on a different computer than the development one, chances are that your attempts how fallen foul of SxS errors. Here’s a simple way to make your app work regardless of which versions, if any, are installed on the target computer.
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June 2, 2009
Stats Life
As a corollary to the import survey from last time, I decided to go slightly deeper and more up to date by providing some more system32 stats on the current Windows 7 release candidate, and a handy dandy table of changes from Server 2008.
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May 17, 2009
Importing Popularity
The top 20 functions imported by the exe’s and dll’s of the System(32) directory on various versions of 32-bit Windows.
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March 12, 2009
UNICODE Independence
As everybody who’s ever done some Windows programming knows, string handling functions come in two flavours. A versions for char based strings, and W versions for WCHAR based strings with the actual function names being macros that expand to the correct versions depending on whether UNICODE has been defined. This is fine and all, but since macros are generally frowned upon in C++ surely there’s a better way to go about this? Surely there’s a method that’ll choose the correct version of the function to use based on whatever type of string the function is given.
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