What is windows-classic-samples?

microsoft/windows-classic-samples — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-06-26

★ 5,603Audience · developerComplexity · 3/5Setup · moderate

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((windows-classic-samples))
    What it is
      Official Microsoft samples
      Win32 and Windows Server APIs
      No single deployable app
    Sample structure
      Visual Studio solution per sample
      Self-contained source code
      Compiles and runs standalone
    How to use
      Clone locally
      Find in Files to search APIs
      Visual Studio Community free
    Audience
      Windows desktop developers
      API reference seekers

mindmap root((windows-classic-samples)) What it is Official Microsoft samples Win32 and Windows Server APIs No single deployable app Sample structure Visual Studio solution per sample Self-contained source code Compiles and runs standalone How to use Clone locally Find in Files to search APIs Visual Studio Community free Audience Windows desktop developers API reference seekers

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What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Find a working, compilable code example of a specific Windows API call to use as a reference while building a desktop app.

USE CASE 2

Bootstrap a new Win32 application by adapting a complete sample that already handles boilerplate window creation and message loops.

USE CASE 3

Learn how a specific Windows system interface works by studying a small, focused project that exercises only that feature.

What is it built with?

C++C#Visual StudioWin32 APIWindows SDK

How does it compare?

	microsoft/windows-classic-samples	shamecom/shamecom	zammad/zammad
Stars	5,603	5,603	5,603
Language	—	—	Ruby
Setup difficulty	moderate	easy	moderate
Complexity	3/5	1/5	4/5
Audience	developer	general	ops devops

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 30min

Requires Visual Studio and the Windows SDK, Visual Studio Community edition is free.

So what is it?

This repository is a collection of code samples from Microsoft that show how to use the Windows programming interfaces for building traditional desktop applications. These are the kind of applications that run directly on Windows as standalone programs, as opposed to web apps or the newer Universal Windows Platform (UWP) style apps. Each sample is a small, self-contained project with its own Visual Studio solution file and all the source code needed to compile and run it. The samples cover the programming models and APIs available on Windows and Windows Server. Most were written for Windows 7, Windows 8.1, or Windows Server 2012 R2 using Visual Studio 2013, though many also work on newer versions of Windows. The primary intended audience is developers who want to see working examples of specific Windows API calls. Microsoft recommends cloning the repository locally and using Visual Studio's Find in Files feature to search across all the sample code for a particular API name. This makes it easy to find a concrete example of how any given Windows function is actually used in practice. Visual Studio Community edition is free and sufficient for this purpose. The repository does not contain UWP (Universal Windows Platform) samples, those live in a separate repository. Links to related sample collections and the official Windows developer documentation are included in the README.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1

I am building a Win32 desktop application and need to use the [specific Windows API]. Help me find and understand the relevant sample in the microsoft/windows-classic-samples repository and adapt it to my use case.

Prompt 2

Show me how to create a basic Win32 window with a message pump, using the pattern from the windows-classic-samples repository as a starting point.

Prompt 3

Help me search the windows-classic-samples repo for all examples that use the [API function name] and explain what each one is demonstrating.

Frequently asked questions