Some Magical and weired bug in Microsoft Windows

• Tuesday, June 10, 2008, 9:41
• Others, tips and technique
• 24 comments

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24 Comments on “Some Magical and weired bug in Microsoft Windows”

• 
  sham wrote on 10 June, 2008, 11:12

  This bug is really interesting and I did’t see yet.
• 
  Kamy wrote on 10 June, 2008, 14:48

  COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!
• 
  Bogdan wrote on 10 June, 2008, 21:01

  Oh come on, mate, they’re as old as the hills. Fun, but still ages old.
  http://www.guy-sports.com/humor/urban_myth/urban_myth_rand.htm
• 
  arty wrote on 10 June, 2008, 21:54

  I love the third one ;p
• 
  Roshan wrote on 11 June, 2008, 4:34

  @Bogdan – Thanks mate, I knew about the third one way before but the first one and second one are quite new to me..
• 
  subesh wrote on 11 June, 2008, 4:56

  Yeha…….cool………I could not believe that…….HA…….
• 
  Ferruccio wrote on 11 June, 2008, 19:17

  #1 isn’t a bug at all. It dates back all the way to MS-DOS 2.0 (talk about maintaining backward compatibility!). There are two (that I know of) hard-wired device names CON and NUL. CON represents the console and NUL the null device (like /dev/null on Unix). Logically, these devices “exist” in every directory, but you’ll never see them in a dir listing. Try this:

  C:>copy filename con

  where filename is an already existing file. It will copy the contents of the file to the console (hopefully it’s a text file). Copying anything to NUL sends it to the bit bucket.
• 
  Danno Ferrin wrote on 11 June, 2008, 19:43

  The issue with con (and prn, aux, nul, and bunches of others) is that these map to magical DOS devices, so you can redirect file output to the console ‘con’ and other such stuff.

  The tech support people obviously cannot use wikipedia, because the whole list of bad files is in the Filename entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filename
• 
  Florian Potschka wrote on 11 June, 2008, 19:52

  Hey that’s great – I’ smarter than all the microsoft guys Just kidding. *g*

  The second bug is ages old: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_hid_the_facts

  And for the first one, I would guess that’s because CON is the name for the display and console device driver. Also you cannot name a file AUX, PRN, COM1, COM2, …
• 
  Bush wrote on 11 June, 2008, 20:18

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_hid_the_facts
• 
  na wrote on 11 June, 2008, 21:19

  CON is reserved device name
• 
  Dan Howard wrote on 11 June, 2008, 21:52

  #1 is not a bug.

  Look up COPY CON DOS command.
• 
  arda wrote on 11 June, 2008, 22:21

  first one is not a bug either

  it’s a well known “feature” since the days of DOS

  check: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_file
• 
  Roshan wrote on 12 June, 2008, 5:30

  @all- Thanks for the link to wikipedia and I’ve tried with all the device file and we can’t create the folder with these names……thanks everybody
• 
  rajit wrote on 23 June, 2008, 15:29

  Ya this is not magical at all…
  I too had a post written about the same stufs some month ago but some of the comments that I got really answered all the mystery.
  CRazy Facts about Windows
  Thanks to my readers.
• 
  Craig wrote on 25 August, 2008, 6:32

  “Microsoft the whole Team, couldn’t answer, why this happened!”
  c’mon, that’s so stupid. Because of that, it felt like reading some spammy e-mail my grandparents send to me.
• 
  Roshan wrote on 25 August, 2008, 11:34

  @Craig – hey man don’t be so serious..it’s just a forwarded mail..you don’t have to be so serious about this…
• 
  Chiron613 wrote on 18 December, 2008, 23:11

  Actually, the Microsoft “whole Team” could easily explain those bugs. So can many other programmers.

  Really, there is nothing very mysterious about highly complex software containing bugs. Once the bug is recognized, it is usually a simple matter to learn what causes it, and how to fix it.
• 
  Rezaul Kabir wrote on 18 February, 2009, 18:16

  COM1 COM2 … PRN NUL will also not work. These are internal device names.

  However, you can change them using Programming languages such as C (using Interrupt 21h AH 39h). Once you create such folder, you will not be able to open the folder. Nice way to protect files.
• 
  Pradheep wrote on 17 March, 2010, 5:02

  just try creating a text file and enter “a” inside and save the file. now you can see that the file shows 1 KB where us in tooltip and properties it shows 1 bytes.
  OS: windows XP
• 
  The Master wrote on 6 September, 2010, 19:33

  CON Folder can not be made any where in the computer coz it refers to the word CONTROL, and who says Microsoft don’t have answer for it …yes they have and the answer is simple CONTROL is the function which is used as CON in Microsoft DB, moreover its a command that commands the control of the system and hence can not be created again ….for the proof of this you can try to do as follows

  Go to Start Menu – Open Run – type “con” and you will be asked to open this file with programs that are installed on ur computer .

  but as this file is made to run the system and its the file which can be opened only in the language in which Microsoft Operating System is designed , so that file is not operable on your Computer but just for the proof purpose you can see that the File Name CON exists and which means that its the real control of the system and hence it cant be changed/ remade.

  hope this will give very clear idea to all of you

  Thanks

Trackbacks

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