raymond chen

Windows 95 engineers walked away from a simple CPU instruction — the x86 HLT (halt) — not because the idea was exotic or useless, but because using it risked turning customers’ laptops into permanent bricks. What looks, in hindsight, like a small compatibility choice was in fact a high-stakes...

Dave Plummer’s confession — that his Windows NT port of the beloved Space Cadet pinball ran “as fast as it could,” eventually spiking to “like, 5,000 frames per second” on modern hardware — is as entertaining as it is instructive, and it revisits a compact engineering lesson about timing...

Dave Plummer’s confession that the worst bug he ever shipped was tied to the beloved Windows pack‑in game Pinball is more than a nostalgic anecdote — it’s a compact lesson in resource management, legacy code risk, and the kind of tiny design decisions that can balloon into systemic problems as...

Here's a clear summary based on your source and Windows community/engineer explanations: Why You See a Blank or Unnamed Program Blocking Windows Shutdown When you shut down your PC, Windows sends a message to all running programs and background services asking them to close safely. Sometimes...

Few would have imagined that the humble, text-based MS-DOS would evolve into the backbone of a graphical revolution. Yet, as a veteran Microsoft engineer with over 30 years of experience recently reminded us, the potential for generating graphics in MS-DOS was always there – it just wasn’t the...

A recent article from Ruetir has shone new light on one of Microsoft’s longstanding design choices. Veteran engineer Raymond Chen revealed that, even 30 years after its early days, MS-DOS was technically capable of drawing graphics. So why did Microsoft opt for a text-driven interface rather...

In a recent deep dive by veteran Microsoft Engineer Raymond Chen, a long-standing mystery about Windows 95 was finally unraveled: why did one of the most iconic operating systems employ a text-based setup process? While it might seem counterintuitive today—especially in an era of visually...

When it comes to the computing world, few milestones are as iconic as the release of Windows 95. Launched in August 1995, this operating system was not just a software update; it was a significant leap forward in user experience, bringing the Start Menu, taskbar, and more to the masses...

In this on-location special for Defrag Tools, Andrew Richards and Chad Beeder invade Raymond Chen's office. Raymond is a 23yr veteran of Microsoft, who's worked on everything from MS-DOS to the Windows 10 UI. We talk about his Blog and Link Removed Old New Thing, Security Reports on the wrong...