I keep forgetting Windows-isms that won't allow you to delete the executable file of a running process. I guess that's also why the arcane .dll upgrade process / WoW is so necessary.
Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware
81–90 of 556 posts
Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware
#82I can only imagine the Win32 API team meeting prior to this... A: So, people are resorting to injecting code in Explorer to delete in-use files in such numbers that it shows up in our top-100 crash report reasons B: Well, maybe we should add a public API to Windows to support this incredibly common functionality that apparently has been missing so far? A: Nah, let's just write a mildly condescending blog post that re…
Raymond Chen writes great stuff but gives a very one-sided picture of compatibility -- he doesn't mention all of the times that it was the other way around, with Windows doing something lame and application authors having to work around it.
Like, for instance, the time that they decided that LaunchAdvancedAssociationUI(), the previous officially recommended way to show UI to allow the user to associate file types with a program, just wouldn't work anymore in Windows 10. Instead of opening up the Default Programs UI in Settings, it just displays a dialog telling the _user_ to go there -- which is even modal so they can't even refer to it while doing so. No compatibility shim or grandfathering for old programs, they just broke all applications that used this like they originally said good programs should do for Windows 8.
Or the case of Dark Mode in Windows, which for some reason they've dragged their heels on implementing barely any Win32 support at all for -- even just simply a call to query whether it is enabled. The current silly recommendation is to obtain the foreground color through WinRT and do a dot product on it to compute luma and determine if it is a dark or light color: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/desktop/moder...
Or the fact that the official way of reporting bugs on the Windows APIs is the Feedback Hub, which is completely unsuitable for task.
I don't have sympathy for the Windows team anymore. Their lack of developer support is partially responsible for all of the hacks that applications have to do to ship.
Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware
#83I can only imagine the Win32 API team meeting prior to this... A: So, people are resorting to injecting code in Explorer to delete in-use files in such numbers that it shows up in our top-100 crash report reasons B: Well, maybe we should add a public API to Windows to support this incredibly common functionality that apparently has been missing so far? A: Nah, let's just write a mildly condescending blog post that re…
This. The deep dive is fascinating, but really feels like a distraction from a product management failure. Microsoft has been 3 decades in the OS business. Surely someone must have noticed that package management should be a core OS feature.
At this point the Windows package manager omnimisery has metastasized and now idiot developers are insisting on writing their own installers even for platforms where it's totally un-necessary (harmful in fact!)
Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware
#84I can only imagine the Win32 API team meeting prior to this... A: So, people are resorting to injecting code in Explorer to delete in-use files in such numbers that it shows up in our top-100 crash report reasons B: Well, maybe we should add a public API to Windows to support this incredibly common functionality that apparently has been missing so far? A: Nah, let's just write a mildly condescending blog post that re…
This. The deep dive is fascinating, but really feels like a distraction from a product management failure. Microsoft has been 3 decades in the OS business. Surely someone must have noticed that package management should be a core OS feature.
Please don't inflict more Microsoft package managers on us. All that needs fixing is there should be a supported way to delete "in-use" files just like you always could on Linux. People may make theoretical arguments about the virtues of locking files but the Linux behavior is so clearly the right thing in practice. Over the years I've encountered approximately zero problems with that behavior on Linux and dozens of problems with the Windows behavior, both as a user and as a developer.
I'm sure it would be hard to add such a thing to Windows while minimizing compatibility problems but I'm equally sure that it's possible and that it's worth the effort.
Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware
#85I’m probably missing something but why is an uninstaller allowed to inject code into explorer.exe? That seems like a massive security flaw?
It's never a security flaw that a program running with administrator privileges is allowed to do something.
It's a security flaw that too many programs have too many privileges. Windows should have pervasive fine grained permissions like any other modern OS.
Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware
#86This tracks, I’ve flagged the nvidia uninstall for hours work because it code injected and flagged behavioral consistent with malware
Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty crazy how Microsoft basically invented the Electron app as HTAs all the way back in 1999. Of course we browsers weren't as capable as they are today, but "I just want a HTML+CSS GUI" had been a solved problem for over ten years when Electron first came out.
Well, you can use IE 9 in HTAs - that browser is plenty capable. :) Been using this as a Windows-only Electron alternative for years.
For the curious: Here's a completely unfinished guide to how you might start developing such an application: https://marksweb.site/hta/ From HTAs, you have access to the file system, the network, the registry, the shell - everything. It might be a bit different than normal web dev, but it's not too bad either.
Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware
#88[dead]
Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty crazy how Microsoft basically invented the Electron app as HTAs all the way back in 1999. Of course we browsers weren't as capable as they are today, but "I just want a HTML+CSS GUI" had been a solved problem for over ten years when Electron first came out.
Yes, and XULRunner allowed this too, using Gecko, Firefox's web engine, to render HTML-like markup specifically designed to build native-like GUIs. Apparently XULRunner was first released in 2006, but Thunderbird, which uses (used?) the same technology, was released as early as 2003, and maybe this was existing in the Mozilla Suite even before.
Thunderbird never quite used XULRunner, I think; they always built their own binary (though at some point quite a lot of the shared stuff moved into the XRE stuff). Think of it as they had a fork of Firefox (much like Firefox had a stripped down fork of the SeaMonkey stuff).
Also, I think one of the Start Menus (might have been XP‽) was kind of HTA-ish? Not sure about that part, though.
Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware
#90I can only imagine the Win32 API team meeting prior to this... A: So, people are resorting to injecting code in Explorer to delete in-use files in such numbers that it shows up in our top-100 crash report reasons B: Well, maybe we should add a public API to Windows to support this incredibly common functionality that apparently has been missing so far? A: Nah, let's just write a mildly condescending blog post that re…
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