In the days before .NET, COM's dependency on the Registry and its backward compatibility issues were the Achilles' heels of Win32 development. Learn a technique for deploying your existing COM components without the pain traditionally associated with the Registry.

The Windows Vista Event Log offers a much richer experience than today's Event Log functionality. Dive into the code and tools that a C++ developer needs to use the new log.

Native code continues to be the most powerful and flexible mechanism for producing applications that work closely with the host OS. For native development in Vista, get to know the new Windows Event Log features.

While Visual Studio Team System cannot resolve the two intrinsic C++ unit-testing problems (cultural issues related to agile programming and lack of metadata in native C++), it does deliver a polished unit-testing framework for C++.

Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) code annotations enable C++ developers to attach metadata to a method's parameters to explicitly define the correct usage of the method.

The Static Code Analyzer that ships with Visual Studio Team System, Developer Edition can detect common security issues in native C/C++ code.