OpenWindowStationA function (winuser.h)

Article
02/22/2024

Opens the specified window station.

Syntax

HWINSTA OpenWindowStationA(
  [in] LPCSTR      lpszWinSta,
  [in] BOOL        fInherit,
  [in] ACCESS_MASK dwDesiredAccess
);

Parameters

[in] lpszWinSta

The name of the window station to be opened. Window station names are case-insensitive.

This window station must belong to the current session.

[in] fInherit

If this value is TRUE, processes created by this process will inherit the handle. Otherwise, the processes do not inherit this handle.

[in] dwDesiredAccess

The access to the window station. For a list of access rights, see Window Station Security and Access Rights.

Return value

If the function succeeds, the return value is the handle to the specified window station.

If the function fails, the return value is NULL. To get extended error information, call GetLastError.

Remarks

After you are done with the handle, you must call CloseWindowStation to free the handle.

Note

The winuser.h header defines OpenWindowStation as an alias which automatically selects the ANSI or Unicode version of this function based on the definition of the UNICODE preprocessor constant. Mixing usage of the encoding-neutral alias with code that not encoding-neutral can lead to mismatches that result in compilation or runtime errors. For more information, see Conventions for Function Prototypes.

Requirements

Requirement	Value
Minimum supported client	Windows 2000 Professional [desktop apps only]
Minimum supported server	Windows 2000 Server [desktop apps only]
Target Platform	Windows
Header	winuser.h (include Windows.h)
Library	User32.lib
DLL	User32.dll
API set	ext-ms-win-ntuser-windowstation-ansi-l1-1-1 (introduced in Windows 10, version 10.0.14393)