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Getting System Folders Easily via API - Windoze Directory

Windoze Directory

An alternative to:

open "C:\Windows\System.ini" for input as #1
Input #1, strSomeString
Close #1

You can do this:

Open GetWindowsDirectory & "system.ini" for input as #1
Input #1, strSomeString
Close #1

So now when the users use it in say Windows NT 4 or Windows 2000(NT 5) you wont get any errors to this critical windows required file.

The code to achieve this is quite easy. Insert the below code into a module(or wait till the last section for all the code in one easy to use module).

Option Explicit
Private Declare Function GetWindowsDirectoryB Lib "kernel32" Alias "GetWindowsDirectoryA" (ByVal lpBuffer As String, ByVal nSize As Long) As Long
Private Const MAX_LENGTH = 512
Public Function GetWindowsDirectory() As String
   Dim s As String
   Dim c As Long
   s = String$(MAX_LENGTH, 0)
   c = GetWindowsDirectoryB(s, MAX_LENGTH)
   If c > 0 Then
       If c > Len(s) Then
           s = Space$(c + 1)
           c = GetWindowsDirectoryB(s, MAX_LENGTH)
       End If
   End If
   GetWindowsDirectory = IIf(c > 0, Left$(s, c), "")
End Function

This will get the windows Directory via the 'GetWindowsDirectoryA' function in the Kernel32 API.

Press on...

Work Work Work
Currently I'm working at Vividas Pty Ltd and studying at Swinburne University. My time on DeveloperFusion is limited due to workloads on both parts, I do however keep a Blog that gets updated fairly regularly with lots of Techno-babble...

I also have a software business called WebSoftware Systems in Australia, the primary product we have at the moment is HotHTML which started life as a simple VB6 based HTML editor and is now a full blown text/web development IDE. I'm currently also working on the v4.0 release in .NET 2.0.

Comments

  • Temp path... the easy way

    Posted by svdoever on 23 Jul 2005

    When you need the Temp folder, the easy (and clean .Net way) is to use: Path.GetTempPath()

  • Posted by Thushan Fernando on 30 Aug 2003

    it will still work for change dpaths... i used TweakXP to try it out on a few VMs and it worked fine... as far as other languaegs go... i only get English versions of OS's from MS so i dont know what ...

  • Posted by boygenius on 30 Aug 2003

    so if the user changes their dir from say C:\WinNT\System32\ to C:\WindowsNT\System Files\ would i still be able to get the Windows DIR and System DIR?

    also what about foreign languages?

  • Posted by Thushan Fernando on 04 Jul 2002

    hey,

    sorry i couldnt reply earlier, I only saw my post now!

    thank-you for your kind words!

  • VERY USEFUL!

    Posted by MichaelMyAss on 21 Jun 2002

    Hey,

    I must say this is EXTREEMLY useful for a nutcase like myself!

    I infact had the exact problem you said most people have.

    Thanks alot! It really helps!