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A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)

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Re: A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)

#91

Post by daemin »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #84
daemin wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only supporting grouped taskbar icons is a big inconvenience when actually trying to do work. Instead of clicking directly on the taskbar item which corresponds to the window you want to access it requires that you hover over the icon, then try to pick out the window you want from a very small thumbnail of it. This just adds extra time and unnecessary thought into this process. It's also quite bizarre given that wide…

>This may have been fixed in recent versions where they finally added the ability to change the taskbar grouping in the settings, but I haven't felt the need to test it. THANK YOU. I never heard about this, I had completely given up on using the taskbar for anything except the system tray. I agree to the rest of your points -- I only use the start menu to search for stuff now. The pinned icons take up way too much sp…

I think it was 23H1 or 23H2 update that added the taskbar grouping option back.

I've also not used Windows 11 in many months so I've probably forgotten a few other annoyances.

Re: A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)

#92

Post by rasz »

praptak wrote: post #39
bombcar wrote: post #19

Kind of sad. Even from this blog, he admits that the Microsoft of old would test software and see if it worked; the Microsoft of now obviously knows of the existence of these shell enhancements, but clearly doesn’t test patches against them at all.

A relevant quote about the lenghts they went to to assure stuff not getting broken: "Jon Ross, who wrote the original version of SimCity for Windows 3.x, told me that he accidentally left a bug in SimCity where he read memory that he had just freed. Yep. It worked fine on Windows 3.x, because the memory never went anywhere. Here’s the amazing part: On beta versions of Windows 95, SimCity wasn’t working in testing. Mi…

It was actually Simcity 2000 for DOS.

Jonathan Ross SimCity 2000 (1993) (IBM Programming) https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,7...

Recently someone hacking away at DOS extender code stumbled on the same bug and fixed it independently.

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=1007153#p1007153

"New version 1.7 of DOS32AWE released, the download link is in the first message. Finally Sim City 2000 is supposed to be working flawlessly. The bug is in the game which sometimes overwrites unallocated RAM . A spare buffer is dedicated now which handles such buggy behavior. Could be useful in other games too."

Re: A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)

#93

Post by StressedDev »

bombcar wrote: post #45
userbinator wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a lot of money and time to spend on supporting someone else's bug-riddled software. Consider that it's money and time that MS spent to get into their position today. They built their empire on "back-compat is king", and betraying that principle gives far less reason for their customers to continue using their software instead of moving to alternatives.

They were the scrappy underdog then, they're the big dog now. At least Apple straight up tells you "we support for about 3 years, then you're boned".

Apple supports its major products for more than 3 years. You typically get 6-8 years of support for an iPhone, iPad, and probably Mac.

Also, Microsoft supports each Windows version for about 10 years.

Re: A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)

#94

Post by JohnFen »

Kwpolska wrote: post #44
userbinator wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a lot of money and time to spend on supporting someone else's bug-riddled software. Consider that it's money and time that MS spent to get into their position today. They built their empire on "back-compat is king", and betraying that principle gives far less reason for their customers to continue using their software instead of moving to alternatives.

Microsoft cares about backwards compatibility and does a good job at it IMO, especially compared to their competitors. The thing that broke was not a public API, but an internal, undocumented, unexported function in Explorer. Microsoft did patch API abuse in the past for prominent software, but they can't be expected to do it forever and for all software.

> Microsoft cares about backwards compatibility and does a good job at it

Indeed. This is one of the few points that I give high marks to Microsoft for, and when it comes to Windows, is the only thing that makes me feel sympathy for Microsoft devs.

Pulling off the level of backward compatibility that Windows has maintained for so long is an incredible accomplishment.

Re: A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)

#95

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

kristianp wrote: post #8
Ciantic wrote: post #6

I know it must be frustrating from Microsoft's standpoint, but those are needed because they keep changing things. Start All Back is one very popular explorer.exe patch that makes the Windows 11 taskbar function a lot like Windows 10. For one thing, it allows you to move the taskbar again. I've also made an explorer.exe in-memory patch to disable flashing taskbar buttons in Windows 10, it injected itself to WndProc a…

Do you have to turn off all system file modification detection to do these hacks? Sounds risky.

Most troubleshooting involves defeating virus checking and opening up the firewall. It's right up there with clearing your cookies and restarting the machine. It's in all the scripts. Totally routine. Nothing to worry about.

/s

Re: A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)

#96

Post by JohnFen »

jfultz wrote: post #75
toast0 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a lot of money and time to spend on supporting someone else's bug-riddled software. You can't test literally all software that exists before you release a security patch. Microsoft has been pushing telemetry for how long? I would think they would have a good idea of what to test so that p99 their software works for their customers. But it depends on the severity of the security issue fixed. If it's a big dea…

This can come up even with application software (which is my area). If it worked before and it's broken now, or if your application appears to be the only thing that is broken for the user, from most user perspectives, it doesn't matter that the problem may have been technically created by an OS bug, errant virus scanner, or whatever. As I tell colleagues, "It may not be our fault, but it's still our problem."

Correct. Customers are paying for a working solution. If what they get doesn't work, they couldn't care less (and shouldn't have to care) about who or what is to blame. They just want it to work.

Re: A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)

#97

Post by magicalhippo »

nottorp wrote: post #37
magicalhippo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've literally spent over 30 minutes on a support call with someone who had accidentally moved and resized their taskbar. All I could get out of the user was "half the screen is grey". I quickly figured out it was probably the taskbar, and I tried asking if it was the top or bottom half, or left or right. "Half" was the reply... After a lot of attempts and little progress, I made a breakthrough by asking in which cor…

Are you the original? This story is very old :)

Hah, not quite that bad :P

Re: A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)

#98

Post by [deleted] »

EdSharkey wrote: post #80

So these patchers are monkey patching a system executable needed to have a bootable/usable system? Why is this allowed? This sounds like a small hell. I left Windows the moment we shifted from "developers, developers, developers, developers" to "advertisers, advertisers, advertisers, advertisers" and never looked back. Ubuntu is very pleasant to work with, nowadays.

[deleted]

Re: A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)

#99

Post by poizan42 »

mrguyorama wrote: post #87
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We might add to the list "tools and utilities desired by power users".

Sure, but if you use/build a tool that modifies how Windows runs by trawling through and manipulating internal process memory that explicitly is not meant to be modified by anything else , that's on you. It's like asking why Nintendo won't support the NES you desoldered the CPU from and replaced with a higher clock capable CMOS 6502 and new crystal "Nintendo is such a bad company, I upgraded my NES and now it can't p…

I don't remember anybody in this thread making any claims about what Microsoft should or should not support.

Re: A jump into the middle of an instruction from nowhere (2023)

#100

Post by rightbyte »

rep_lodsb wrote: post #74
adrian_b wrote: post #15

While in this case the jump into the middle of an instruction was not intentional, several decades ago many Microsoft programs for MS-DOS, like their BASIC interpreter, contained frequent intentional jumps into the middle of instructions. This technique had already been used in many Microsoft programs for CP/M, i.e. for Intel 8080 or Zilog Z80 CPUs. There were two reasons for the use of such jumps in the middle of in…

Rather than "jumping into the middle of an instruction" (which to me implies some crazy trickery where both the original instruction and the middle of it do something useful, like the sibling comment about biology), a more straightforward way of looking at it is that the "jumped-into" instruction is actually a single-byte jump which skips over the one or two following bytes - and those shouldn't be considered to be p…

> Rather than "jumping into the middle of an instruction" (which to me implies some crazy trickery where both the original instruction and the middle of it do something useful, like the sibling comment about biology)

Doesn't "jumping into the middle of the instruction" just mean that decoding from the middle is another instruction, then when decoding from the start of it?

E.g.:

    IMUL -> 0x0FAF 
    SCASW -> 0xAF
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