It's not too hard. Just write a simple wrapper around FormatMessage: DWORD errorCode = GetLastError(); DWORD dwFlg = FORMAT_MESSAGE_ALLOCATE_BUFFER | FORM

It's not too hard. Just write a simple wrapper around FormatMessage: DWORD errorCode = GetLastError(); DWORD dwFlg = FORMAT_MESSAGE_ALLOCATE_BUFFER | FORMAT_MESSAGE_FROM_SYSTEM | FORMAT_MESSAGE_IGNORE_INSERTS; LPTSTR lpMsgBuf = NULL; FormatMessageA(dwFlg, 0, errorCode, 0, (LPTSTR)&lpMsgBuf, 0, NULL); // Error message is in lpMsgBuf so make sure to free afterwards. LocalFree(lpMsgBuf);