The Chonkerton

DLL that was not present in memory despite not being formally unloaded

dev_tools

According to the Microsoft Old New Thing blog, Raymond Chen explores a curious Windows behavior: a DLL that was never formally unloaded, yet somehow vanished from memory. This kind of discrepancy between DLL lifecycle logic and actual behavior is what Chen specializes in — uncovering the corner cases and historical quirks that catch Windows developers by surprise. For anyone debugging DLL loading issues, it's a reminder that the operating system's memory model can defy expectations.

Source: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20260625-00/?p=112467

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