hi, I'm trying to get some simple piece of code I found on a website to work in VC++ 2010 on windows vista 64: #include "stdafx.h" #include <windows.h> int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[]) { DWORD dResult; BOOL result; char oldWallPaper[MAX_PATH]; result = SystemParametersInfo(SPI_GETDESKWALLPAPER, sizeof(oldWallPaper)-1, oldWallPaper, 0); fprintf(stderr, "Current desktop background is %s\n", oldWallPaper); return 0; } it does compile, but when I run it, I always get this error: Run-Time Check Failure #2 - Stack around the variable 'oldWallPaper' was corrupted. I'm not sure what is going wrong, but I noticed, that the value of oldWallPaper looks something like "C\0\:\0\0U\0s\0e\0r\0s[...]" -- I'm wondering where all the \0s come from. A friend of mine compiled it on windows xp 32 (also VC++ 2010) and is able to run it without problems any clues/hints/opinions? thanks