However, Windows 9X didn't actually support the 16-bit wide-char winapi. Apparently it did actually define the *W functions but they were nearly all just stubs.

However, Windows 9X didn't actually support the 16-bit wide-char winapi. Apparently it did actually define the *W functions but they were nearly all just stubs. In 2001 Microsoft retroactively added support for the wide-char API to Windows 9X (according to https://stackoverflow.com/a/35329506/1185152 https://stackoverflow.com/a/35329506/1185152): > In 2001 Microsoft released an add-on for Windows 9x called the Microsoft Layer for Unicode (MSLU), which changed the W functions from failing-stubs to thunking proxies which converted the strings back into an 8-bit format and then called the A functions, so programs explicitly using W functions could run on Windows 9x.