Front Page News

• How did the invalid floating point operand exception get raised when I disabled it? Last time, we learned about the dangers of uninitialized floating point variables but left with a puzzle: Why wasn't this caught during internal testing? I dropped a hint when I described how SNaN s work: You have to ask the processor to raise an exception... 07-03-2008, 10:00 AM from The Old New Thing : Code to External News with 0 comments and 54 Views Filed under: Code

• Uninitialized floating point variables can be deadly A colleague of mine related to me this story about uninitialized floating point variables. He had a function that went something like this, simplified for expository purposes. The infoType parameter specified which piece of information you're requesting,... 07-02-2008, 10:00 AM from The Old New Thing : Code to External News with 0 comments and 89 Views Filed under: Code

• Windows Vista changed the Alt+Tab order slightly For decades, the Alt+Tab order was the same as the Z-order , but that changes in Windows Vista if you use the enhanced Alt+Tab feature known as Flip , which is on by default on most systems. There are three types of interactive task switching in Windows... 07-01-2008, 10:00 AM from The Old New Thing : Tips/Support to External News with 0 comments and 163 Views Filed under: Tips/Support

• You don't need that 90 byte whereis program any more Yes, you can write a whereis program in 90 bytes but Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista both come with a version of WHERE.EXE , so you don't even need the batch file any more. Read More...... 06-30-2008, 10:00 AM from The Old New Thing : Tips/Support to External News with 0 comments and 158 Views Filed under: Tips/Support

• Essential Tool for the Job - Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1 for Windows Vista (RTM Announcement) RTM Announcement - Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1 Hello, It's been a few months since I last blogged about the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1 - formerly known as WVHA or Windows Vista Hardware Assessment. Today, I'd like... 06-30-2008, 9:53 AM from Windows Vista Team Blog to External News with 0 comments and 43 Views Filed under: Announcement, Business, Business Deployment, Desktop Optimization Pack, Enterprise, Experience Blog, Featured News, Hardware, IT Pro, IT Professionals, MAP, Microsoft Assessment and Planning, Microsoft Partner Program, Release-to-Manufacturing, Release-to-Market, Virtualization, Windows Vista, Windows Vista Capable, Windows Vista Hardware Assessement Tool, Windows Vista SP1

• GUIDs are globally unique, but substrings of GUIDs aren't A customer needed to generate an 8-byte unique value, and their initial idea was to generate a GUID and throw away the second half, keeping the first eight bytes. They wanted to know if this was a good idea. No, it's not a good idea. The GUID generation... 06-27-2008, 10:00 AM from The Old New Thing : Code to External News with 0 comments and 209 Views Filed under: Code

• REMINDER: Attend one of the HP MediaSmart Connect Webinars! Yesterday, the 1st of 4 webinars on the HP MediaSmart Connect took place with special guest Ed Bott from ZDNet . You can register to watch the session on-demand here . The HP MediaSmart Connect is a brand new Extender for Windows Media Center device that... 06-25-2008, 7:39 PM from Windows Vista Team Blog to External News with 0 comments and 32 Views Filed under: Extenders for Windows Media Center, HP, HP MediaSmart Connect, Webinars, Windows Media Center, Windows Vista

• Try out the New Windows Live Mobile Homepage Beta On your mobile phone - check out http:// mhome.live.com . It is the new Windows Live Mobile Homepage currently in Beta. I took some shots on my BlackJack II to share. This page is your one-stop place for what's happening in your Windows Live social network... 06-24-2008, 11:40 PM from Windows Vista Team Blog to External News with 0 comments and 36 Views Filed under: Featured News, Mobile, Windows Live, Windows Live Mobile Homepage, Windows Mobile 6.1, Winodws Mobile

• Just because you're using a smart pointer class doesn't mean you can abdicate understanding what it does It's great when you have a tool to make programming easier, but you still must understand what it does or you're just replacing one set of problems with another set of more subtle problems. For example, we discussed earlier the importance of knowing when... 06-23-2008, 10:00 AM from The Old New Thing : Code to External News with 0 comments and 298 Views Filed under: Code

• Donations to the Microsoft Archives: Pens, CDs, and paperweights Among other responsibilities, the Archives department preserves Microsoft history, be it old hardware , old software, old documentation, or ephemera. Last year, one of my colleagues was cleaning out his office because he was moving to Granada , and of... 06-20-2008, 10:00 AM from The Old New Thing : History to External News with 0 comments and 275 Views Filed under: History