Comment by amaccuish

> But it seems kind of unlikely: the Wine sources do not show this pattern.

Wine is not an NT kernel. Wine deals with the Win32 api, not the kernel.

> Looking at the code of the identically named KeBalanceSetManager function, we can see that not only is the function prototype identical, but the order in which it does things is also identical. First it changes a thread priority, then it schedules a periodic timer callback.

When trying to build an OS that is binary compatible with another, including the low-level like kernel drivers, surely it's expected that the prototypes be the same?

> The loop does nothing, just sits blocking in a loop forever. Why does this code in ReactOS exist if it does nothing?

Perhaps because the ReactOS kernel is note feature-complete, it's Alpha, so that part hasn't been implemented?