I want to open Msconfig from a button on my GUI - c++

Question

In my line of work I use msconfig a lot and I'm wanting to create a tool with various buttons on it so I can easily access my most commonly used programs. I'm using the Win32API to create the GUI and buttons, however I am having trouble getting msconfig to run. In my program I have
void callMsconfig()
{
ShellExecute(NULL,(LPCWSTR)L"open", (LPCWSTR)L"C:\\Windows\\System32\\msconfig.exe", NULL, NULL, SW_SHOWDEFAULT);
}
and an action statement so when the button is pressed the function is called. I've tried replacing ShellExecute() with system() and CreateProcess(). I've also replaced "open" with "runas" and the most I've gotten is the error saying C:\Windows\System32\msconfig.exe cannot be found when I know it is there because I've checked. What am I doing wrong? I'm using Windows 10 Home if that helps any.

Answer 1

If you have created a 32bit app that is running inside of the WOW64 emulator on 64bit systems, the C:\Windows\System32\ folder is silently redirected by WOW64 to the C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ folder, which does not have an msconfig.exe file. You need to account for that. Either create a 64bit executable, or use the Sysnative alias in 32bit code that runs inside of WOW64. Sysnative is documented on MSDN:
File System Redirector:
32-bit applications can access the native system directory by substituting %windir%\Sysnative for %windir%\System32. WOW64 recognizes Sysnative as a special alias used to indicate that the file system should not redirect the access. This mechanism is flexible and easy to use, therefore, it is the recommended mechanism to bypass file system redirection. Note that 64-bit applications cannot use the Sysnative alias as it is a virtual directory not a real one.
Try something more like this:
#include <shlwapi.h>
void callMsconfig()
{
BOOL IsWow64 = FALSE;
WCHAR szCmdLine[MAX_PATH] = {0};
IsWow64Process(GetCurrentProcess(), &IsWow64);
if (IsWow64)
{
GetWindowsDirectoryW(szCmdLine, MAX_PATH);
PathAppendW(szCmdLine, L"Sysnative");
}
else
{
GetSystemDirectoryW(szCmdLine, MAX_PATH);
}
PathAppendW(szCmdLine, L"msconfig.exe");
ShellExecuteW(NULL, NULL, szCmdLine, NULL, NULL, SW_SHOWDEFAULT);
}
However, do note that if UAC is enabled and you try to launch msconfig.exe from a 32bit process running inside of WOW64, the 32bit process MUST be running elevated or else ShellExecute() (and CreateProcess()) will fail to find the file correctly. I don't know why, but that is how it works. UAC Elevation is not required when launching msconfig.exe from a 64bit process.
If you don't want to elevate your entire program, you will have to make it launch a separate elevated process that can then launch msconfig.exe. You could just have the program launch a second copy of itself with a command-line parameter so it knows to just launch msconfig.exe and then exit itself. To launch an elevated process, you can use ShellExecute() specifying the runas verb.