Fooling Around

Given the combo box initialization code:

m_ComboBox.SetRedraw(FALSE);
m_ComboBox.ResetContent();
for(INT nIndex = 0; nIndex < 3; nIndex++)
    m_ComboBox.AddString(AtlFormatString(_T("Item %d"), nIndex + 1));
m_ComboBox.SetCurSel(1);
m_ComboBox.SetRedraw(TRUE)

How the combo box is going to look like?

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One thing is worth special mentioning in connection with previous post on DirectShow Filter Graph Spy on Microsoft Vista system: ATL’s CSecurityDesc class caused to waste some time.

CRegKey Key;
ATLENSURE_SUCCEEDED(HRESULT_FROM_WIN32(Key.Open(HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, pszKeyName, READ_CONTROL | WRITE_OWNER)));
CSecurityDesc AdministratorsOwnerSecurityDescriptor;
AdministratorsOwnerSecurityDescriptor.SetOwner(Sids::Admins());
ATLENSURE_SUCCEEDED(HRESULT_FROM_WIN32(Key.SetKeySecurity(OWNER_SECURITY_INFORMATION, &AdministratorsOwnerSecurityDescriptor)));

The code compiles fine, but on runtime it gives error 87 (ERROR_INVALID_PARAMETER, E_INVALIDARG) in the last line, returned from RegSetKeySecurity API call. My first guess was that ATL’s CSecurityDesc class for some reason prepared wrong descriptor which resulted in rejecting it as an argument. From the first glance it looks (not sure) that this class deals, to some extent, with structures itself rather than using API functions, so it could be that it results in something looking differently from expected by API calls.

Still the problem is in class itself and its cast from CSecurityDesc& to required SECURITY_DESCRIPTOR* type. The class only implements operator to automatically cast to const SECURITY_DESCRIPTOR* type, so the following line would not be passed by compiler:

Key.SetKeySecurity(OWNER_SECURITY_INFORMATION, AdministratorsOwnerSecurityDescriptor)

However &AdministratorsOwnerSecurityDescriptor is another level of indirection and hence SECURITY_DESCRIPTOR** type, which is passed by compiler, but results in indeed invalid argument.

So in order to correctly convert CSecurityDesc& to SECURITY_DESCRIPTOR* it can be done this way:

CRegKey Key;
ATLENSURE_SUCCEEDED(HRESULT_FROM_WIN32(Key.Open(HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, pszKeyName, READ_CONTROL | WRITE_OWNER)));
CSecurityDesc AdministratorsOwnerSecurityDescriptor;
AdministratorsOwnerSecurityDescriptor.SetOwner(Sids::Admins());
ATLENSURE_SUCCEEDED(HRESULT_FROM_WIN32(Key.SetKeySecurity(OWNER_SECURITY_INFORMATION, const_cast<SECURITY_DESCRIPTOR*>((const SECURITY_DESCRIPTOR*) AdministratorsOwnerSecurityDescriptor))));

I decided to download a beta of Windows 7, so many people shared their positive impressions of. I am not quite sure I will have time to actually evaluate it, but for the case I would feel like, it is always nice to have the .ISO image ready for a try.

There was nothing worth a word until I reached the download screen which opened an extremely awful Java applet that pretended to be a download manager. It seemed to be a new spin of technology and sort of I don’t need a nice download manager anymore because direct HTTP links are out of fashion. It started pumping bytes (actually thanks for that) and I my attempt to copy/paste a direct link into my DownThemAll FireFox plugin was vain.

At some 20% the download froze without a notice. The download did not even ungray the resume buttons before I restarted FireFox process and then any attempt to resume led to weird message boxes. Frankly at this point I almost lost the desire to actually complete the download. But left a last chance to have it completed by IE. Internet Explorer (expectedly!) preferred ActiveX control to Java applet. It’s GUI was a bit less scary and it took over incomplete download and…

An attached debugger showed a call stack (oops, I did not save exact call stack) in Manager.exe process in C runtime module, in a CString class method… It went no further than this crashing at exactly the same point until I manually deleted the incomplete download, when it again repeated a weird message box and then finally restart the download from the start. That was enough for me and found a .torrent with the exactly the same file on thepiratebay.org, which I am quite sure will download without a problem.

Isn’t it incredibly stupid that significant amount of work was invested into unnecessary task, ugly user interface, buggy implementation (freeze, incapable download manager, weird messages, crash) with a solid residual of inability to conveniently download the thing, while the file could be just put onto regular MS download service?

I am sharing a couple of utilities to be able to quick check system settings. TimeZoneInformation prints in a human friendly style TIME_ZONE_INFORMATION structure as reported by Windows through GetTimeZoneInformation API.

TIME_ZONE_INFORMATION:
.Bias: -120
.StandardName: FLE Standard Time
.StandardDate: { .wYear 0, .wMonth 10, .wDay 5, .wDayOfWeek 0, .wHour 4, .wMinute 0, .wSecond 0, .wMilliseconds 0 }
.StandardBias: 0
.DaylightName: FLE Daylight Time
.DaylightDate: { .wYear 0, .wMonth 3, .wDay 5, .wDayOfWeek 0, .wHour 3, .wMinute 0, .wSecond 0, .wMilliseconds 0 }
.DaylightBias: -60
[...]

A Visual C++ .NET 2008 source code is available from SVN, release binary included.

And the second utility is MonitorInformation to print multi-monitor related information again as reported by Windows, GetSystemMetrics and EnumDisplayMonitors APIs.

System Metrics:
  SM_XVIRTUALSCREEN: 0
  SM_YVIRTUALSCREEN: 0
  SM_CXVIRTUALSCREEN: 1680
  SM_CYVIRTUALSCREEN: 1050
  SM_CMONITORS: 1
  SM_SAMEDISPLAYFORMAT: 1

Monitor 0 at (0, 0) - (1680, 1050):
  Coordinates (rcMonitor): (0, 0) - (1680, 1050)
  Work Area (rcWork): (0, 0) - (1680, 1026)
  Flags (dwFlags): 0x1
  Device Name (szDevice): \\.\DISPLAY1

A Visual C++ .NET 2008 source code is available from SVN, release binary included.