Question

Rather than using WMI to obtain the last boot time, I wanted to calculate it using ::GetSystemTime() and ::GetTickCount64. But once I get to milliseconds, I don’t know how to get back to a FILETIME object.

I tried this:

static ULONGLONG FileTimeToMillis(const FILETIME &ft)
{
    ULARGE_INTEGER uli;
    uli.LowPart = ft.dwLowDateTime; // could use memcpy here!
    uli.HighPart = ft.dwHighDateTime;

    return uli.QuadPart/10000;
}

static void MillisToSystemTime(ULONGLONG millis, SYSTEMTIME *st)
{
   UINT64 t = static_cast<UINT64>(-10000) * static_cast<UINT64>(millis);

   FILETIME ft;
   ft.dwLowDateTime = static_cast<DWORD(t & 0xFFFFFFFF);
   ft.dwHighDateTime = static_cast<DWORD>(t >> 32);

   ::FileTimeToSystemTime(&ft, st);
}

void main()
{
    SYSTEMTIME st, lt, st2, lt2;

    ::GetSystemTime(&st);
    ::GetLocalTime(&lt);

    cout << "The system time is: " << st.wHour << ":" << st.wMinute << ":" << st.wSecond << endl;
    cout << "The local time is: "  << lt.wHour << ":" << lt.wMinute << ":" << lt.wSecond << endl;

    FILETIME sft, lft;
    ::SystemTimeToFileTime(&st, &sft);
    ::SystemTimeToFileTime(&lt, &lft);  

    cout << "The system time in millis is: " << FileTimeToMillis(sft) << endl;
    cout << "The local time in millis is: "  << FileTimeToMillis(lft) << endl;

    MillisToSystemTime(FileTimeToMillis(sft), &st2);
    MillisToSystemTime(FileTimeToMillis(sft), &lt2);

    cout << "The system time (post conversion) is: " << st2.wHour << ":" << st2.wMinute << ":" << st2.wSecond << endl;
    cout << "The local time (post conversion) is: "  << lt2.wHour << ":" << lt2.wMinute << ":" << lt2.wSecond << endl;
}

But I certainly don’t get what’s expected. Instead, I get:

The system time is: 15:5:2
The local time is: 10:5:2
The system time in millis is: 12984678302935
The local time in millis is: 12984660302935
The system time (post conversion) is: 52428:52428:52428
The local time (post conversion) is: 52428:52428:52428

Any ideas? Please don’t tell me to use Boost or because it’s not available to me.

Answer 1

The system time (post conversion) is: 52428:52428:52428

When you get weirdo values, always convert to hex first. 52428 == 0xcccc. That’s the value that the debug build generated code uses to initialize variables. So you are looking at uninitialized memory.

Next defense strategy is to never ignore the return value of Windows api function. Use a VERIFY() macro, like the one available in MFC. You’ll then easily see that FileTimeToSystemTime() fails.

The bug is -10000.