The Old New Thing

Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.

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Apr 30, 2026
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Developing a cross-process reader/writer lock with limited readers, part 3: Fairness

Raymond Chen

Let the exclusive acquisition have a fair chance against shared acquisitions.

Apr 29, 2026
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Developing a cross-process reader/writer lock with limited readers, part 2: Taking turns when being grabby

Raymond Chen

Please, not everybody, everything all at once.

Apr 28, 2026
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Developing a cross-process reader/writer lock with limited readers, part 1: A semaphore

Raymond Chen

A pot of tokens.

Apr 27, 2026
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Looking at consequences of passing too few register parameters to a C function on various architectures

Raymond Chen

It's bad news no matter how you slice it, but Itanium makes it even worse.

Apr 24, 2026
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Defending against exceptions in a scope_exit RAII type

Raymond Chen

But maybe it's not worth it.

Apr 23, 2026
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Another crash caused by uninstaller code injection into Explorer

Raymond Chen

Inadvertently destroying a staircase while standing on it.

Apr 22, 2026
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Mapping the page tables into memory via the page tables

Raymond Chen

So-called "fractal page mapping".

Apr 21, 2026
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Sure, xor’ing a register with itself is the idiom for zeroing it out, but why not sub?

Raymond Chen

Somehow xor became the most popular version.

Apr 20, 2026
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How did code handle 24-bit-per-pixel formats when using video cards with bank-switched memory?

Raymond Chen

You still have to use aligned accesses, even though the pixels might not be aligned.

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