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Archive for the ‘Windows Development’ Category

Windows DLL and EXE rebase

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/04/20

Some links on rebase for Windows DLLs and EXE files, including effects on .NET CLR.

Rebasing – Wikipedia
[WayBack] Massive Rebase: DLL Sharing and ASLR Investigation
[WayBack] Rebasing Win32 DLLs | Dr Dobb’s
[WayBack] memory – Purpose of Base Address? – Software Engineering Stack Exchange
[WayBack] Difference between /DYNAMICBASE and /HIGHENTROPYVA is unclear · Issue #282 · MicrosoftDocs/cpp-docs · GitHub
[WayBack] /DYNAMICBASE | Microsoft Docs
[WayBack] Does ASLR relocate all DLLs by the same offset? | The Old New Thing. No.
[WayBack] Rebasing DLLs on Windows (Sun Java System Application Server 9.1 Performance Tuning Guide)
[WayBack] Why should I even bother to use DLL’s in my system? – Larry Osterman’s WebLog
[WayBack] delphi – Should I change my Image Base? – Stack Overflow
[WayBack] winapi – Delphi: Set ImageBase bigger than 32-bit (for 64-bit Windows application) – Stack Overflow
[WayBack] $ImageBase Compiler Directive – Delphi in a Nutshell [Book]
[WayBack] How important is it nowadays to ensure that all my DLLs have non-conflicting base addresses? | The Old New Thing: Not so much, since ASLR changes it anyway.

In the presence of ASLR, rebasing your DLLs has no effect because ASLR is going to ignore your base address anyway and relocate the DLL into a location of its pseudo-random choosing.

Mind you, even though rebasing has no effect, it doesn’t hurt either.

If you are on a system without ASLR (either because it predates ASLR, or because ASLR has been disabled for whatever reason), then rebasing will help, for the traditional reasons.

Mind you, systems without ASLR are really hard to find nowadays, so rebasing provides no benefit in the overwhelming majority of cases. But in that vanishingly small percentage of cases where you don’t have ASLR, then rebasing helps.

Conclusion: It doesn’t hurt to rebase, just in case, but understand that the payoff will be extremely rare. Build your DLL with /DYNAMICBASE enabled (and with /HIGHENTROPYVA for good measure) and let ASLR do the work of ensuring that no base address collision occurs. That will cover pretty much all of the real-world scenarios. If you happen to fall into one of the very rare cases where ASLR is not available, then your program will still work. It just may run a little slower due to the relocation penalty.

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, Delphi, Development, Software Development, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

Delphi use of FS segment: structured exception handling

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/03/16

A while ago, I had to trace through a lot of code in the CPU pane to track down some memory allocation related issues.

I wondered what the use of the FS segment was about, so via [Archive.is] delphi what is fs segment used for – Google Search, I found that it is related to Win32 Structured Exception handling and therefore not limited to Delphi, through these links:

A few disassembly parts to show how the Delphi Win32 compiler uses this for try finally blocks and try except blocks is below. Note that often, there are implicit try finally blocks when having managed method parameters or local variables.

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Delphi, Development, Software Development, Undocumented Delphi, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

Automatically closing ABBY Finereader 5.0 windows after scanning is completed

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/02/23

Both my Fujitsu ScanSnap ix500 and ix100 scanners can be used from Windows to automatically scan to PDF.

PDF conversion is done through the included ABBYY FineReader 5.0 software.

However, on each scan, it keeps a dialog open with the scan results, even if scanning went fine.

When scanning lots of documents, lots of dialogs are open, causing two problems:

a lot of memory and window handle resource usage
- this can be ~100 megabytes per instance
a lot of disk usage:
- it keeps both the non-OCR and OCR PDF files active (only when closing, the non-OCR PDF file is deleted)

I wanted to close that dialog automatically, but none of the configuration settings allow it.

So I wrote a quick and dirty solution, that could have been in any tool supporting the Windows API and call backs. The solution below should easily translate to tools other than Delphi.

These are the only Windows API functions used:

these types:

[WayBack] hWnd
[WayBack] lParam

and these constants:

[WayBack] BM_CLICK
- Simulates the user clicking a button. This message causes the button to receive the WM_LBUTTONDOWN and WM_LBUTTONUP messages, and the button’s parent window to receive a BN_CLICKED notification code.
[WayBack] GW_OWNER
- [WayBack] Window Features – Windows applications | Microsoft Docs: Owned Windows
[WayBack] GWL_STYLE
- [WayBack] Window Styles – Windows applications | Microsoft Docs
[WayBack] WM_CLOSE
[WayBack] WS_EX_APPWINDOW

The basic structure is an EumWindows call passing a callback that gets called for all top level Windows, then in the callback, for matching captions: call EnumChildWindows with another callback. In that callback, for matching captions and child captions, perform a click or close.

[WayBack] EnumChildWindows already enumerates recursively – The Old New Thing
[WayBack] How to iterate child controls in your Dialog? | Visual C++ Tips
[WayBack] c++ – How to get handles to all windows of another application – Stack Overflow
[WayBack] delphi – How to get captions of actual windows currently running? – Stack Overflow
[WayBack] windows – Is the order in which handles are returned by EnumWindows meaningful? – Stack Overflow
[WayBack] c++ – How can I simulate a button click given the handle to the button’s window? – Stack Overflow

Send a BM_CLICK message to the HWND of the button:SendMessage(hButton, BM_CLICK, 0, 0);That causes the button to receive WM_LBUTTONDOWN and WM_LBUTTONUP messages
[WayBack] Delphi inspect external TLabels inside a TGroupBox via EnumWindows, Enumchildwindows or Spy++ – Stack Overflow
[WayBack] winapi – How do I find all windows using C#? – Stack Overflow (which is of great help with the Windows API wrappers in C#)

Log of Windows related to both programs:

ParentHWnd=$00000000;HWnd=$00030602;IsVisible=-1;IsOwned=0;IsAppWindow=-1;WindowTextLength=33;WindowText="ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap 5.0"
> Recursive child windows for ABBYY
  ParentHWnd=$00030602;HWnd=$000205E2;IsVisible=-1;IsOwned=0;IsAppWindow=0;WindowTextLength=0;WindowText=""
  ParentHWnd=$00030602;HWnd=$000205E0;IsVisible=-1;IsOwned=0;IsAppWindow=0;WindowTextLength=0;WindowText=""
  ParentHWnd=$00030602;HWnd=$000205EC;IsVisible=-1;IsOwned=0;IsAppWindow=0;WindowTextLength=0;WindowText=""
  ParentHWnd=$00030602;HWnd=$000205EA;IsVisible=-1;IsOwned=0;IsAppWindow=0;WindowTextLength=74;WindowText="Register your copy of ABBYY FineReader and receive the following benefits:"
  ParentHWnd=$00030602;HWnd=$000205E8;IsVisible=-1;IsOwned=0;IsAppWindow=0;WindowTextLength=25;WindowText="- Free technical support;"
  ParentHWnd=$00030602;HWnd=$000205E6;IsVisible=-1;IsOwned=0;IsAppWindow=0;WindowTextLength=51;WindowText="- Information about new versions of ABBYY products."
  ParentHWnd=$00030602;HWnd=$000205E4;IsVisible=-1;IsOwned=0;IsAppWindow=0;WindowTextLength=12;WindowText="Registration"
  ParentHWnd=$00030602;HWnd=$000205FC;IsVisible=-1;IsOwned=0;IsAppWindow=0;WindowTextLength=0;WindowText=""
  ParentHWnd=$00030602;HWnd=$000205FA;IsVisible=-1;IsOwned=0;IsAppWindow=0;WindowTextLength=6;WindowText="&Close"
  > Child is Close button: clicking.
  < ParentHWnd=$00000000;HWnd=$00030602;IsVisible=-1;IsOwned=0;IsAppWindow=-1;WindowTextLength=33;WindowText="ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap 5.0"
  ParentHWnd=$00030602;HWnd=$000205F6;IsVisible=-1;IsOwned=0;IsAppWindow=0;WindowTextLength=34;WindowText="Processing finished (warnings: 1)."
  ParentHWnd=$00030602;HWnd=$000205F4;IsVisible=-1;IsOwned=0;IsAppWindow=0;WindowTextLength=31;WindowText="Converting to searchable PDF..."
  ParentHWnd=$00030602;HWnd=$000205F0;IsVisible=-1;IsOwned=0;IsAppWindow=0;WindowTextLength=0;WindowText=""
  ParentHWnd=$00030602;HWnd=$000205EE;IsVisible=-1;IsOwned=0;IsAppWindow=0;WindowTextLength=0;WindowText=""
  ParentHWnd=$00030602;HWnd=$000205D2;IsVisible=-1;IsOwned=0;IsAppWindow=0;WindowTextLength=63;WindowText="Page 1. Make sure the correct recognition language is selected."

ParentHWnd=$00000000;HWnd=$00010248;IsVisible=-1;IsOwned=-1;IsAppWindow=0;WindowTextLength=14;WindowText="Creative Cloud"
> Recursive child windows for Creative Cloud
  ParentHWnd=$00010248;HWnd=$0001024A;IsVisible=-1;IsOwned=0;IsAppWindow=0;WindowTextLength=28;WindowText="Main Container Client Dialog"
  ParentHWnd=$00010248;HWnd=$0002034A;IsVisible=-1;IsOwned=0;IsAppWindow=0;WindowTextLength=3;WindowText="IMS"
  ParentHWnd=$00010248;HWnd=$0001035A;IsVisible=-1;IsOwned=0;IsAppWindow=0;WindowTextLength=0;WindowText=""
  ParentHWnd=$00010248;HWnd=$00020350;IsVisible=-1;IsOwned=0;IsAppWindow=0;WindowTextLength=18;WindowText="Sign in - Adobe ID"
  > Child is Signin button: closing parent.
  < ParentHWnd=$0003011A;HWnd=$00010248;IsVisible=-1;IsOwned=-1;IsAppWindow=0;WindowTextLength=14;WindowText="Creative Cloud"
    < ParentHWnd=$00000000;HWnd=$0003011A;IsVisible=0;IsOwned=0;IsAppWindow=0;WindowTextLength=4;WindowText="Core"

It appears that ABBYY has a different set of booleans than Creative Cloud.

This is kind of odd, as delphi – How to get captions of actual windows currently running? – Stack Overflow points to Window Features – Windows applications | Microsoft Docs: Owned Windows stating:

The Shell creates a button on the taskbar whenever an application creates a window that isn’t owned. To ensure that the window button is placed on the taskbar, create an unowned window with the WS_EX_APPWINDOW extended style. To prevent the window button from being placed on the taskbar, create the unowned window with the WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW extended style. As an alternative, you can create a hidden window and make this hidden window the owner of your visible window.

Apparently, ABBYY fully plays by the rules, but Creatheive Cloud cheats a bit: none of the Windows are WS_EX_APPWINDOW, but the hidden unowned “Core” owner of the “Creative Cloud” still makes it appear on the taskbar.

–jeroen

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Delphi, Development, Fujitsu ScanSnap, Hardware, ix100, ix500, Power User, Scanners, Software Development, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

Some LCID links and notes

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/02/10

Document locations changed, so here are some links to newer and older documentation on LCID related things:

Delphi: a few short notes on LoadString and loading shell resource strings for specific LCIDs, for which I need to check which ones have suffered from link rot.
[WayBack] MAKELCID macro | Microsoft Docs:

Creates a locale identifier from a language identifier and a sort order identifier.
- Table: [WayBack] Locale Identifiers – Windows applications | Microsoft Docs with special values:
  - 0x007F [WayBack] LOCALE_INVARIANT – Windows applications | Microsoft Docs The locale used for operating system-level functions that require consistent and locale-independent results.
  - 0x0400 [WayBack] LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT – Windows applications | Microsoft Docs: The default locale for the user or process.
    - Delphi 2009 added support for it and names it VAR_LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT: [WayBack] VarUtils.VAR_LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT Constant
  - 0x0800 [WayBack] LOCALE_SYSTEM_DEFAULT – Windows applications | Microsoft Docs: The default locale for the operating system.
  - [WayBack] LOCALE_CUSTOM* Constants – Windows applications | Microsoft Docs
    - 0x0C00 LOCALE_CUSTOM_DEFAULT The default custom locale.
      - When an NLS function must return a locale identifier for a supplemental locale for the current user, the function returns this value instead of LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT.
    - 0x1000 LOCALE_CUSTOM_UNSPECIFIED An unspecified custom locale, used to identify all supplemental locales except the locale for the current user.
      - Supplemental locales cannot be distinguished from one another by their locale identifiers, but can be distinguished by their locale names. Certain NLS functions can return this constant to indicate that they cannot provide a useful identifier for a particular locale.
    - 0x1400 LOCALE_CUSTOM_UI_DEFAULT The default custom locale for MUI.
      - The user preferred UI languages and the system preferred UI languages can include at most a single language that is implemented by a Language Interface Pack (LIP) and for which the language identifier corresponds to a supplemental locale. If there is such a language in a list, the constant is used to refer to that language in certain contexts.
- List: [WayBack] Language Identifiers – Windows applications | Microsoft Docs
  The following are predefined language identifiers:
  - LANG_SYSTEM_DEFAULT. The operating system default language.
  - LANG_USER_DEFAULT. The language of the current user.
- Table: [WayBack] Language Identifier Constants and Strings – Windows applications | Microsoft Docs
- Table: [WayBack] [MS-LCID]: Windows Language Code Identifier (LCID) Reference | Microsoft Docs
- Table: [WayBack] Microsoft Locale ID Values | Microsoft Docs via [WayBack] Locale ID (LCID) Chart | Microsoft Docs
- Table: [WayBack] Sort Order Identifiers – Windows applications | Microsoft Docs
- Conversion macros and their documentation in [WayBack] moflow/ntdef.h at master · Cisco-Talos/moflow · GitHub:
```
//  A locale ID is a 32 bit value which is the combination of a
//  language ID, a sort ID, and a reserved area.  The bits are
//  allocated as follows:
//
//       +-------------+---------+-------------------------+
//       |   Reserved  | Sort ID |      Language ID        |
//       +-------------+---------+-------------------------+
//        31         20 19     16 15                      0   bit
//
//  WARNING: This pattern isn't always followed (es-ES_tradnl vs es-ES for example)
//
//  It is recommended that applications test for locale names or actual LCIDs.
//
//  Locale ID creation/extraction macros:
//
//    MAKELCID            - construct the locale id from a language id and a sort id.
//    MAKESORTLCID        - construct the locale id from a language id, sort id, and sort version.
//    LANGIDFROMLCID      - extract the language id from a locale id.
//    SORTIDFROMLCID      - extract the sort id from a locale id.
//    SORTVERSIONFROMLCID - extract the sort version from a locale id.
//
//  Note that the LANG, SUBLANG construction is not always consistent.
//  The named locale APIs (eg GetLocaleInfoEx) are recommended.
//
//  LCIDs do not exist for all locales.
```
- Equivalent C# translations of these marcos are in [WayBack] MediaPortal-2/DSHelper.cs at master · MediaPortal/MediaPortal-2 · GitHub.
Setting and restoring the default user language:
API calls:
Saving/restoring data between locales:
- [WayBack] Using Persistent Locale Data – Windows applications | Microsoft Docs
  Using Persistent Locale Data
  
  A globalized application often persists or transmits data, for example, time and date. When deciding how your application should handle data persistence, remember that data is not guaranteed to be the same from computer to computer or between runs of the application. This is true for both locales that ship with Windows and custom locales.
  
  Design of the application must take into account a variety of locale-related data changes that can occur. For example:
  - Currency symbols can change as countries adopt the Euro.
  - Regional preferences can change. For example, the format d/m/y might change to the format m/d/y for a particular locale.
  - The spelling of day names can change due to spelling reforms. Additionally, casing can change for month or day names.
  Use Locale-Independent Formats for Storage and Data Interchange
  
  An application that persists data should use locale-independent formats for storage and data interchange. Examples are hard-coded or standard formats; the invariant locale LOCALE_NAME_INVARIANT; and binary storage formats.
  
  If persistent sorting data is required, the application must use the CompareStringOrdinal function. Remember that an invariant format does not remain invariant for sorting, only for locale and calendar data.
  
  Use the User Default Locale for Data Presentation
  
  To present persistent data, it is best for the application to reformat the data using the user default locale. Use of this locale allows user overrides. For more information, see LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT.

A few links on Raymond Chen

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/02/09

I linked to [WayBack] the Old New Thing a lot from my blog, but never put in a few links to the author of all those posts: Raymond Chen.

So here you go:

[WayBack] User Raymond Chen – Stack Overflow
[WayBack] Raymond Chen – Wikipedia (odd articles about him are only in a few languages there; this one is in my native Dutch language)
People have a love/hate relationship reading his blog (love because of the technical content; hate because they usually have to fix bugs described there): [WayBack] I hate reading Raymond Chen’s blog – virtualdub.org.

Recurring topics on his blog:

He is on some videos to, for instance [Archive.is] One Dev Question with Raymond Chen – Why Are There 4 Functions for Converting Strings to GUIDs | One Dev Minute | Channel 9 (the actual mp4 video file through Archive.is).

You can find many more via raymond chen site:channel9.msdn.com – Google Search

—jeroen

Posted in Development, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

LockWindowUpdate function (Windows) and some OldNewThing thoughts

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/02/02

If you ever think about using [WayBack] LockWindowUpdate function (Windows), then read these first:

The LockWindowUpdate function disables or enables drawing in the specified window. Only one window can be locked at a time.
20040610: [WayBack] Speeding up adding items to a combobox or listbox – The Old New Thing
20060220: [WayBack] Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar? – The Old New Thing
20070219: [WayBack] What does LockWindowUpdate do? – The Old New Thing
20070220: [WayBack] How is LockWindowUpdate meant to be used? – The Old New Thing
20070221: [WayBack] With what operations is LockWindowUpdate meant to be used? – The Old New Thing
20070223: [WayBack] Final remarks on LockWindowUpdate – The Old New Thing
20100830: [WayBack] On LockWindowUpdate: Locking the taskbar – The Old New Thing
20111024: [WayBack] There’s a default implementation for WM_SETREDRAW, but you might be able to do better – The Old New Thing

TL;DR:

Do not use LockWindowUpdate as the limitation is system wide: Only one Window in the system can be used for LockWindowUpdate.

Use WM_SETREDRAW if you can as LockWindowUpdate “should only to be called to disable drawing in the window beneath the cursor during a drag and drop operation”: there is only one locked window at a time: There can be only one drag/drop operation active at a time, since there is only one mouse.

Instead of LockWindowUpdate(hwnd)

Use SendMessage(hwnd, WM_SETREDRAW, FALSE, 0) or
SetWindowRedraw(hwnd, FALSE)

Instead of LockWindowUpdate(NULL)

Use SendMessage(hwnd, WM_SETREDRAW, TRUE, 0) or
SetWindowRedraw(hwnd, TRUE)

Instead of	`LockWindowUpdate(hwnd)`
Use	`SendMessage(hwnd, WM_SETREDRAW, FALSE, 0)` or `SetWindowRedraw(hwnd, FALSE)`

Instead of	`LockWindowUpdate(NULL)`
Use	`SendMessage(hwnd, WM_SETREDRAW, TRUE, 0)` or `SetWindowRedraw(hwnd, TRUE)`

Prototype

BOOL LockWindowUpdate(
  _In_ HWND hWndLock
);

Oh, and it’s not called LockWindowUpdate everywhere: [WayBack] Setting a Visual Studio breakpoint on a Win32 API function in user32.dll – The Entrian Solutions Blog.

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Software Development, The Old New Thing, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

“I finally finished this awesome game called Photoshop, let me send you a video” – Raymond Chen

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/02/01

I finally finished this awesome game called Photoshop, let me send you a video [WayBack] I finally finished this awesome game called Photoshop, let me send you a video – The Old New Thing

–jeroen

Posted in Uncategorized, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

Detecting what language or script a run of text is written in, redux – The Old New Thing

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/01/29

Interesting: [WayBack] Detecting what language or script a run of text is written in, redux – The Old New Thing.

Do not confuse language with the scripts in which one or more languages can be written, and much more is covered in it.

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Software Development, The Old New Thing, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

Not all language packs are created equal…

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/01/12

[WayBack] Why don’t I get properly translated program output after installing the corresponding language pack? – The Old New Thing.

It means you cannot fully cover all translations when writing software.

More on translating your software at [WayBack] Where can I get the glossary of Microsoft’s standard translations for computer terms? – The Old New Thing « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff.

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Software Development, The Old New Thing, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

Releases · upx/upx · GitHub

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/01/04

I totally forgot that upx – UPX – the Ultimate Packer for eXecutables has been on GitHub for quite a while, which meant I was running a really old version 3.91.

You can get the most recent via [WayBack] Releases · upx/upx · GitHub.
Documentation is now at [Archive.is] UPX: the Ultimate Packer for eXecutables – Homepage.
The move is documented at [Archive.is] UPX Blog Post: Moving to GitHub

There have been quite a few things updated and documented in [Archive.is] upx-news.txt covering these milestones:

[Archive.is] milestone 1 (for version 3.92)
[Archive.is] milestone 2 (for version 3.93)
[Archive.is] milestone 3 (for version 3.94)

Via UPX – Wikipedia

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Windows Development’ Category

Windows DLL and EXE rebase

Delphi use of FS segment: structured exception handling

Automatically closing ABBY Finereader 5.0 windows after scanning is completed

Some LCID links and notes

Using Persistent Locale Data

Use Locale-Independent Formats for Storage and Data Interchange

Use the User Default Locale for Data Presentation

A few links on Raymond Chen

LockWindowUpdate function (Windows) and some OldNewThing thoughts

TL;DR:

“I finally finished this awesome game called Photoshop, let me send you a video” – Raymond Chen

Detecting what language or script a run of text is written in, redux – The Old New Thing

Not all language packs are created equal…

Releases · upx/upx · GitHub

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Recent Posts

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Use the User Default Locale for Data Presentation

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