Question

I’m trying to use CreateProcess in order to run a file that is located on the user’s Program Files directory, so I’m trying to use CSIDL_PROGRAM_FILESX86 since that specific program will always be on the (x86) folder.

My problem is that I can’t get it to work, for some reason I cannot find any example of how to use createprocess and CSIDL_PROGRAM_FILESX86

Can you direct me to such example? Maybe I should use a different function?

EDIT:

This is my current code:

wchar_t* localAppData = 0;
SHGetFolderPath(NULL, CSIDL_PROGRAM_FILESX86, 0, NULL, &localAppData);

wstringstream ss;
ss << localAppData << L"/MyApp/MyExe.exe";

CreateProcess(static_cast<void*>(localAppData));

I’m getting this for teh SHGetFolderPath:

cannot convert parameter 5 from wchar_t ** to LPWSTR

Also, even though I’ve included sstream in the headers, I’m getting these errors:

'wstringstream' : undeclared identifier

Note: I’m using SHGetFolderPath as I need this to work on both XP and Vista/7

Any ideas?

Answer 1

The problem is the C style string handling that you need for the Windows API:

wchar_t localAppData[MAX_PATH]; // Array, not a pointer.
SHGetFolderPath(NULL, CSIDL_PROGRAM_FILES, 0, NULL, localAppData);

std::wstringstream ss;
ss << localAppData << L"/MyApp/MyExe.exe";

CreateProcess(ss.str().c_str(), ...);

Also, note that only CSIDL_PROGRAM_FILES is supported with SHGetFolderPath.