List installed screensavers

[Ryan McCauley]

In a project I'm developing, I need to duplicate the functionality of the Display Properties -> Screen Saver tab. Most importantly, I'd like to list the screensavers the person has installed on their computer, complete with descriptions. I know that screensavers are usually located in the "%windir%\system32\" folder (Usually C:\Windows\System32), but is there a possibility that a screensaver that's available in this list could be located elsewhere on the system? If so, then what method can I use to reliably list the screensavers available? I've searched through the registry, and there don't seem to be any keys that I can enumerate to give me a list. The other problem I'm encountering is that I can't seem to locate the "title" of the screensaver. I assumed it would be visible through FileVersionInfo.GetVersionInfo, but that doesn't seem to be the case (unless I'm blind). Can anybody point me in the right direction here?

[Peter Ritchie]

Yep it just lists the *.SCR files that impelement the screen saver entry points. PeterRitchie.com

[Ryan McCauley]

But how can I extract the "title" of the screensaver to list them on my form? I'd like to use the same display title as the Display Settings window uses, if that's possible - I assume you have to be able to find that somewhere, since Windows does it.

[Peter Ritchie]

The string resource with ID 1 is used as the title to display in Display control panel applet. PeterRitchie.com

[Ryan McCauley]

I guess I'm missing it here, but how do I extract a resource from another EXE file? Is there some code available to do this rather simply? Either VB or C# will do. Thanks for your help!

[Peter Ritchie]

.NET doesn't have support for Win32 resources. You have to pinvoke LoadStringW from kernel32. A little helper class:

using System;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.Text;

namespace PeterRitchie
{
/// <summary>
/// Helper class for various things
/// </summary>
[ComVisible(false)]
sealed class Helper
{
[DllImport("kernel32.dll", CharSet=CharSet.Auto)]
private static extern IntPtr LoadLibrary(string lpFileName);
[DllImport("user32", EntryPoint="LoadString")]
private static extern int LoadStringW(int hInstance, int wID, [Out] StringBuilder lpBuffer, int nBufferMax) ;

	/// <summary>
	/// Load a Win32 Resource string.
	/// </summary>
	/// <param name="ModuleFilePathString">Module to load from</param>
	/// <param name="ID">ID or index of the string</param>
	/// <param name="LoadedString">Destination reference</param>
	public static void LoadString(String ModuleFilePathString, int ID, ref String LoadedString)
	{
		IntPtr InstanceHandle = LoadLibrary(ModuleFilePathString);  

		StringBuilder BufferString = new StringBuilder(1024);

		LoadStringW(InstanceHandle.ToInt32(), ID, BufferString, BufferString.Capacity);
		LoadedString = BufferString.ToString();
	}
}

};

Sample usage:

using PeterRitchie;
string LoadedString = "";
Helper.LoadString(@"C:\\windows\\system32\\ssbezier.scr", 1, ref LoadedString);
Debug.WriteLine(LoadedString);

Enjoy! PeterRitchie.com