{"id":11543,"date":"2011-02-09T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-09T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2011\/02\/09\/why-does-shgetknownfolderpath-return-e_fail-for-a-known-folder\/"},"modified":"2011-02-09T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-02-09T07:00:00","slug":"why-does-shgetknownfolderpath-return-e_fail-for-a-known-folder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20110209-00\/?p=11543","title":{"rendered":"Why does SHGetKnownFolderPath return E_FAIL for a known folder?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nA customer reported having problems with the\nSH­Get­Known­Folder­Path<\/code> function.\nI’ve left in the red herrings.\n<\/p>\n

\n

\nOn Windows 7, I’m trying to retrieve the Internet folder\nwith the following code:\n<\/p>\n

\nif (OpenProcessToken(GetCurrentProcess(), TOKEN_ALL_ACCESS, &hToken))\n{\n HRESULT hr = SHGetKnownFolderPath(FOLDERID_InternetFolder,\n                              KF_FLAG_DONT_VERIFY, hToken, &pszPath);\n ...\n}\n<\/pre>\n
\nThe call always fails with E_FAIL<\/code>.\nWhat am I doing wrong?\nI tried passing NULL<\/code> as the token, but that didn’t help.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nThe reason the call fails has nothing to do with Windows 7\nor the token.\nThe call fails because FOLDERID_Internet­Folder<\/code> is\na virtual folder—there is no path in the first place!\n<\/p>\n
\nThe reason is that the folder you are requesting is a virtual\nfolder (KF_CATEGORY_VIRTUAL).\nVirtual folders don’t exist in the file system, so they don’t have a path.\nSH­Get­Known­Folder­Item<\/code> should work.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nThe customer appears to have misinterpreted this response\nin a way I wasn’t expecting\n(but which sadly\n\nI’ve seen before<\/a>):\n<\/p>\n
\n
\nI added the KF_CATEGORY_VIRTUAL<\/code> flag, but I still\nget the same error back.\n<\/p>\n
\nif (OpenProcessToken(GetCurrentProcess(), TOKEN_ALL_ACCESS, &hToken))\n{\n HRESULT hr = SHGetKnownFolderPath(FOLDERID_InternetFolder,\n                              KF_FLAG_DONT_VERIFY | KF_CATEGORY_VIRTUAL,\n                              hToken, &pszPath);\n ...\n}\n<\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nUm, no, that makes no sense at all.\nKF_CATEGORY_VIRTUAL<\/code>\nis a KF_CATEGORY<\/code>\nvalue, but the second parameter to\nSH­GetKnown­Folder­Path<\/code>\nis a KNOWN_FOLDER_FLAG<\/code>.\nYou can’t just combine unrelated values like that.\nIt’s like\n\nadding 3 grams to 12 meters<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n
\nAnd second, the KF_CATEGORY_VIRTUAL<\/code> enumeration isn’t\nsomething that you pass in to “override” anything.\nThe point is that FOLDERID_Internet­Folder<\/code> is a virtual\nfolder: It has no path, so if you try to ask for its path, you’ll\njust get an error back because the thing you’re looking for\nsimply doesn’t exist.\n<\/p>\n
\nI never did figure out what this customer was trying to do.\nMaybe they figured, since they can’t\n\ndownload the Internet<\/a>,\nthey could at least try to do a\nFind­First­File<\/code> on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A customer reported having problems with the SH­Get­Known­Folder­Path function. I’ve left in the red herrings. On Windows 7, I’m trying to retrieve the Internet folder with the following code: if (OpenProcessToken(GetCurrentProcess(), TOKEN_ALL_ACCESS, &hToken)) { HRESULT hr = SHGetKnownFolderPath(FOLDERID_InternetFolder, KF_FLAG_DONT_VERIFY, hToken, &pszPath); … } The call always fails with E_FAIL. What am I doing wrong? I tried […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-11543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-code"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
A customer reported having problems with the SH­Get­Known­Folder­Path function. I’ve left in the red herrings. On Windows 7, I’m trying to retrieve the Internet folder with the following code: if (OpenProcessToken(GetCurrentProcess(), TOKEN_ALL_ACCESS, &hToken)) { HRESULT hr = SHGetKnownFolderPath(FOLDERID_InternetFolder, KF_FLAG_DONT_VERIFY, hToken, &pszPath); … } The call always fails with E_FAIL. What am I doing wrong? I tried […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}