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I was wondering in what situation will we see a difference between Win+D and Win+M ?

This thread claims that the former does a "show desktop" while the latter does a "minimize all" (but of course there's no difference between those two),

Whereas this thread talks about stuff like wm_minimize message..

Now I was wondering what's the real difference between them?

Why have two shortcuts that do the same thing?

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"Minimize All" sends a minimize command to all windows. However, some windows don't support the minimize command, and will thus still be visible. In those cases, "Show Desktop" will get you to the desktop. Note that the windows that don't support minimizing are still there, unminimized, they just become invisible.

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also note that you can press Win+D again to restore everything, whereas pressing Win+M again doesn't restore. – studiohack♦ Nov 14 '11 at 10:34
@studiohack what about the WIN+SHIFT+M? – Pacerier Nov 14 '11 at 11:26
@Graeme btw do you know which windows are those that don't support minimizing? – Pacerier Nov 14 '11 at 11:27
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They're not invisible, they're behind the desktop [which is an actual window - the "real" desktop from the 3.1 era isn't normally visible]. – Random832 Nov 14 '11 at 14:42
@Pacerier: any window without a minimize button. – ThatGraemeGuy Nov 15 '11 at 10:00
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