Articles Tagged “Win32”
13 articles tagged “Win32”, newest first.
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The Depths of Windows I/O (Part 6, Final) — How Minifilters Work and Investigating Slow I/O with Procmon
Explains how minifilters monitor and control file I/O: FltMgr, altitudes, pre/post callbacks, fltmc, finding slow operations in Procmon, plus exclusion and D...
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The Depths of Windows I/O (Part 4) — Cache Manager: When Does Your WriteFile Actually Reach the Disk?
Part 4 of a diagram-led Windows Cache Manager series. It covers the cache as a file mapping, read-ahead, lazy writing, FlushFileBuffers, FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERI...
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The Depths of Windows I/O (Part 3) — I/O Completion Ports (IOCP) and the .NET Thread Pool: The Basement Under async/await
Part 3 of a diagram-led series on I/O completion ports (IOCP). It covers the queue plus thread-count control, the concurrency value, LIFO release, and .NET c...
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The Depths of Windows I/O (Part 2) — Synchronous and Asynchronous I/O: What OVERLAPPED Really Means
Part 2 explains Windows synchronous and asynchronous (overlapped) I/O: FILE_FLAG_OVERLAPPED, the four notification paths, synchronous completion, cancellatio...
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The Depths of Windows I/O (Part 1) — Every Read and Write Becomes an IRP: The Big Picture of the I/O System
Part 1 of a series on Windows I/O from the ground up: the Object Manager namespace, the driver, device and file objects, the IRP lifecycle, and what CloseHan...
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MAX_PATH and Windows Path/Filename Pitfalls — the 260-Character Limit, Reserved Names, Trailing Dots, and Case Sensitivity
A rundown of the path and filename limits behind the classic 'file not found' bug. Covers the breakdown of MAX_PATH=260, enabling long paths with LongPathsEn...
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Safely Calling Win32 APIs from C# — A Practical P/Invoke Guide (DllImport / LibraryImport / CsWin32)
A practical rundown of what to watch for when calling Win32 APIs and native DLLs from C# via P/Invoke. Covers the differences between DllImport and LibraryIm...
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What Is MFC on Windows? Foundational Knowledge for Maintaining Existing Assets
An overview of the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC): its relationship to Win32, application structure, message maps, Document/View, DDX/DDV, and the things...
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Handling Windows Impersonation Tokens Correctly — Borrowing Privileges per Thread and Reverting Safely
A practical guide to Windows impersonation tokens — access tokens, primary tokens, thread tokens, impersonation levels, RevertToSelf, and .NET's WindowsIdent...
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Why Windows Became What It Is Today: The Evolution of Windows Through a Developer's Eyes
A look at the changes from Windows 95 to Windows 11 — not as a visual timeline, but from a Windows application developer's perspective: compatibility, stabil...
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How to Concretely Isolate "Only the Operations That Need Administrator Privileges" in a Windows App
A concrete walkthrough of keeping a Windows app UI at asInvoker while isolating only the administrator-privileged operations into a helper EXE, covering UAC,...
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Storing Secrets in Windows Apps - Avoiding Plaintext Configuration with DPAPI
To avoid storing connection credentials and API tokens in plaintext configuration files in Windows apps, we walk through DPAPI / ProtectedData, the differenc...
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A Minimum Security Checklist for Windows App Development
A checklist-style guide to the security basics for WPF / WinForms / WinUI / C++ / C# business apps: privileges, signing, updates, secrets, HTTPS, input valid...