vb.net is one of the best choices to learn programming and to produce applications faster. After seeing a complete application done easily kids would be impressed and attracted more and more by programming world. Through the years and when the experience grows the little programmer will have a better idea about what he/she wants ( kind of programming he/she prefers). In addition, it will be clear to him that there are more sphisticated programming languages and more powerful ones to do advanced tasks. I think that learning VB.NET or C# at the beginning and then to move to C/C++ to have full power ;)

may be the program isn't compatible with the OS you are using. So i suggest to try to run the application with "run with compatibility with Win95,98,nt,..." may be it will work.

I think that subclassing the desires window could resolve the problem.

DLLs can be written without any class, only in C. This is done easily with VC++.

1 is more logical ;)

I love it but sometimes I hate it hahaha

If you want to improve your experience in systeme programming, I suggest that you stay working with C++ the language of Gods ;) But if you desire to make a tour in web developpement world working with asp.net is a good choice. My opinion is that you work with the new company (good salary, discovering new things ... and improving your CV). But I think that if you find a good job in VC++ will be better.

you can hide MyComputer from the desktop or from the start menu by doing the following : user key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\ NonEnum] sys key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\ NonEnum] name: {20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D} type: REG_DWORD (Valeur DWORD) value: (0 = show, 1 = hide)

can you show how do you create the menu items ? May be I'll find a suggestion to solve your problem.

Take a look to masm32 web site, it contains handy informations.

I forgot to tell you that for the moment I am interested in C/C++ and Visual C++ programming, I am not proficient at C#. :)

I hope that these infos can be programmatically helpful. :)

Concerning the registry these are below some keys and values : BIOS: Clé Système: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DESCRIPTION\System] Nom: SystemBiosDate, SystemBiosVersion, VideoBiosDate Type: REG_SZ Processor: Clé Système: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DESCRIPTION\System\CentralProcessor\0] Nom: ~MHz, Identifier, VendorIdentifier ...

There are some APIs that can may be help you : //////////// APIs //////////////////// Disks: GetDiskFreeSpaceEx Retrieves information about the specified disk, including the amount of free space on the disk. ... Monitors : GetMonitorInfo Retrieves information about a display monitor. ... Power Management: CallNtPowerInformation Sets or retrieves power information. GetCurrentPowerPolicies Retrieves the current system power policy settings. GetDevicePowerState Retrieves the current power state of the specified device. GetPwrCapabilities Retrieves information about the system power capabilities. GetPwrDiskSpindownRange Retrieves the disk spindown range. ... GetSystemPowerStatus Retrieves the power status of the system. ... IsSystemResumeAutomatic Indicates the current state of the computer. PowerReadACValue Retrieves the AC power value for the specified power setting. ... PowerReadDCDefaultIndex Retrieves the default DC index of the specified power setting. Keyboard: GetKeyboardType Retrieves information about the current keyboard. Processor : IsProcessorFeaturePresent Determines whether a processor feature is supported by the current computer. System : SystemParametersInfo Queries or sets system-wide parameters.

hi, the registry is full with this kind of infos .. Furthermore, there's some APIs that give handy details on some hardware ( hard drive, ..)

hi, you can take a look to the native API function ZwQueryDirectoryFile that are capable to help you in your research.

Hi, If you want to use the functions contained in your DLL, you've to load this DLL in the memory space of your process. To do that you need to call the Win32 API function LoadLibrary (see MSDN) . After that you can obtain pointers to the desired function and you would be abele to call it.

If you draw each card as a Graphics GDI+ object you can find them easier.

For IAT patching I advice you to read the codeproject article of Mr. A.Bassov "Process-wide API spying - an ultimate hack" wich contains a deep explanation of IAT hooking. Concerning direct API hooking wich is far more efficient comparing to the IAT technique you can find in codeproject some good articles or look to the well known microsoft project with fully source code : "detours"

perhaps you can find first the handle to that window (child window) and then to send to it a destroy message.