Category Archives: Programming

PAE patch updated for Windows 8

Posted on December 26, 2012 by wj32

This patch allows you to use more than 3/4GB of RAM on an x86 Windows system. Works on Vista, 7, 8, has been tested on Windows Vista SP2, Windows 7 SP0, Windows 7 SP1 and Windows 8 SP0. Instructions and … Continue reading →

Posted in Hardware, Programming, Windows | Tagged , | 54 Comments

How to backup files in C++ using the volume shadow copy service (VSS)

Posted on December 13, 2012 by wj32

If you’re writing a backup program, you need to be able to read and access files that are in use by other programs. The proper way to do this is to use the Volume Shadow Copy Service. The MSDN pages … Continue reading →

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NiceVS makes Visual Studio 2012 usable again

Posted on December 12, 2012 by wj32

OK, Visual Studio 2012′s new user interface isn’t that bad. But you need to get some serious work done, and you don’t want to be forced to hover your cursor over each monochrome icon to get a tooltip explaining what … Continue reading →

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EnumWindows no longer finds Metro/Modern UI windows: a workaround

Posted on December 12, 2012 by wj32

In the final release of Windows 8, the EnumWindows function no longer lists Metro/Modern UI windows: Note For Windows 8 and later, EnumWindows enumerates only top-level windows of desktop apps. This change was made some time around the consumer preview … Continue reading →

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ObQueryTypeInfo and NtQueryObject buffer overrun in Windows 8

Posted on November 30, 2012 by wj32

**** Update: **** Microsoft is now aware of this bug. Here’s some output from WinDbg on Windows 8 while I was debugging a driver: These two UNICODE_STRINGs are from the OBJECT_TYPE structures of the Section and TmTx (transaction) object types. … Continue reading →

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Introducing WJ’s Backup

Posted on December 10, 2011 by wj32

Recently I became frustrated with Cobian Backup. It was the only free software I could find that: supported incremental backups, supported Volume Shadow Copy, and didn’t install a bunch of extra, useless startup entries and services. However, two things sucked: … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming, Windows | Tagged , | 3 Comments

PAE patch updated for Windows 7 SP1

Posted on February 23, 2011 by wj32

Note: An updated version for Windows 8 is available. This patch allows you to use more than 3/4GB of RAM on an x86 Windows system. Works on Vista and 7, has been tested on Windows Vista SP2, Windows 7 SP0 … Continue reading →

Posted in Hardware, Programming, Windows | 121 Comments

The NT "reserve object"

Posted on July 18, 2010 by wj32

Windows 7 introduced two new object types: UserApcReserve and IoCompletionReserve. What do these object types have in common? They’re both created using NtAllocateReserveObject. If we look inside this system call we can see that the third argument is an index … Continue reading →

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PAE patch updated for Windows 7

Posted on May 4, 2010 by wj32

Note: An updated version for Windows 7 SP1 is available. This patch allows you to use more than 3/4GB of RAM on an x86 Windows system. Works on Vista and 7, has been tested on Windows Vista SP2 and Windows … Continue reading →

Posted in Hardware, Programming, Windows | Tagged , , , | 62 Comments

HOWTO: Use I_QueryTagInformation

Posted on March 30, 2010 by wj32

Process Explorer 12 includes a new feature whereby you can view service names associated with threads. To find out how this works, read this article by Alex Ionescu. You won’t be completely satisfied, though. You still don’t know how to … Continue reading →

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