I have a small header file of my own which declares a couple of functions, one of which has a return type of DWORD. I'm reluctant to drag in windows.h just to get the official definition of this type since that file is huge, and my header will be used in a number of source modules that don't otherwise need it.

Of course, in practice I know that DWORD is just unsigned int, but I'd prefer the more hygienic approach of including an official header file if possible.

On this page it says that DWORD is defined in windef.h, but unfortunately including just this small file directly leads to compilation errors -- apparently it expects to be included by other headers. (Also, the fact that my file is a header file also means I can't just declare WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN, since the source file that #includes my file might need this to be left undefined.)

Any ideas? I know it's not the end of the world -- I can just continue to #include <windows.h> -- but thought someone might have a better idea!