The Old New Thing

Psychic debugging: Why your CPU usage is hovering at 50%

December 2, 2005 Dec 2, 2005 12/2/05

Raymond Chen

Sometimes psychic debugging consists merely of seeing the bigger picture. On one of our internal bug-reporting mailing lists, someone asked, "How come when I do XYZ, my CPU usage goes to 50%?" My psychic answer: "Because you have two processors." The response was genuine surprise and amazement. How did I know they had two processors? ...

What one Windows XP feature am I most proud of?

December 1, 2005 Dec 1, 2005 12/1/05

Raymond Chen

Of all the things I did for Windows XP, if I had to choose the one feature that I'm most proud of, it's fixing Pinball so it doesn't consume 100% CPU. The program was originally written for Windows 95 and had a render loop that simply painted frames as fast as possible. In the checked build, you could tell the program to display ...

Sometimes the fault is not in our stars but in ourselves

November 30, 2005 Nov 30, 2005 11/30/05

Raymond Chen

An earlier name for Windows Server 2003 was Microsoft Windows .NET Server, and in the final weeks leading up the the product's release, we received the following bug from a beta tester: When I call the GetVersionEx function on build 3773, the OS name is still reported as "Microsoft Windows .NET Enterprise Server". I have attached a ...

The craft of UI design: flow|state

November 29, 2005 Nov 29, 2005 11/29/05

Raymond Chen

You can tell right away that Jan Miksovsky's flow|state is about user interface design. I've had the pleasure of working with Jan when he was at Microsoft. Whereas I focus on the mechanics of making a user interface happen, Jan looks at the bigger problems of design and interface architecture. For example, in this entry he considers the ...

Where does an IT guy from a major hotel chain stay at the PDC?

November 28, 2005 Nov 28, 2005 11/28/05

Raymond Chen

I believe it was Marc Miller who related this story to me at the PDC. He was chatting with someone whose name badge identified him as an employee from a major high-end hotel chain. Marc joked, "Well, I think it's obvious which hotel you're staying at." "Oh no," the gentleman replied. "They won't let me stay there. Too expensive." [...

How to get Raymond to stop being interested in talking with you

November 25, 2005 Nov 25, 2005 11/25/05

Raymond Chen

I was at a party in New York City earlier this year, and a conversation went like this: Person: What do you do? Me: I'm a computer programmer at Microsoft. Person: <viciously> I hate you. If Miss Manners didn't say so explicitly, I suspect she would nevertheless agree that snarling "I hate you" to somebody on first introduction is ...

What causes a program to be marked as “new” on the Start menu?

November 24, 2005 Nov 24, 2005 11/24/05

Raymond Chen

One of the features new in the Windows XP Start menu is that "newly-installed" programs are highlighted. Before discussing the rules, a quick backgrounder on why the feature exists at all. Research revealed that one of the tasks people had trouble with was installing a new program and running it. The step that the "new programs" feature...

What does the word “supported” mean?

November 18, 2005 Nov 18, 2005 11/18/05

Raymond Chen

Is the /3GB switch supported on Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition? It depends on what you mean by "supported". Unfortunately, the word has multiple meanings, and the intended meaning is not always obvious from context. One definition of "supported" is "The software makes a good-faith attempt to implement the functionality." For the ...

In real life, nobody upgrades their server

November 15, 2005 Nov 15, 2005 11/15/05

Raymond Chen

When you install Windows on a machine that already has a copy of Windows, you get the option of performing a "clean" install (installing the operating system from scratch, ignoring the existing one) or an "upgrade" install (upgrading the existing operating system to the new one). And in real life, it turns out, surveys show that nobody ...

I just have a plain standard-issue guest chair

November 11, 2005 Nov 11, 2005 11/11/05

Raymond Chen

Whereas Larry started with a standard office layout and added a fancy-dancy desk chair, I have opted to modify the standard office layout by removing items. First, I got rid of the corner piece, which is a colossal waste of space due to its sheer size. All that space behind the keyboard and monitor serves only to collect dust. Out it goes...