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VirtualAlloc (kernel32)
 
.
Summary

C# Signature:

[DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError=true, ExactSpelling=true)]
static extern IntPtr VirtualAllocEx(IntPtr hProcess, IntPtr lpAddress,
   IntPtr dwSize, AllocationType flAllocationType, MemoryProtection flProtect);

C# Signature:

    [DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError = true, ExactSpelling = true)]
    static extern IntPtr VirtualAllocEx(IntPtr hProcess,
                        IntPtr lpAddress,
                        int dwSize,
                        AllocationType flAllocationType,
                        MemoryProtection flProtect);

VB.NET Signature:

<DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError:=True, ExactSpelling:=True)> _
Private Function VirtualAllocEx(ByVal hProcess As IntPtr, ByVal lpAddress As IntPtr, _
     ByVal dwSize As IntPtr, ByVal flAllocationType As UInteger, _
     ByVal flProtect As UInteger) As IntPtr
End Function

Boo Signature:

[DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError : true, ExactSpelling : true)]
static def VirtualAllocEx(hProcess as IntPtr, lpAddress as IntPtr, dwSize as IntPtr, flAllocationType as AllocationType, flProtect as MemoryProtection) as IntPtr:
     pass

User-Defined Types:

[Flags]
public enum AllocationType
{
     Commit = 0x1000,
     Reserve = 0x2000,
     Decommit = 0x4000,
     Release = 0x8000,
     Reset = 0x80000,
     Physical = 0x400000,
     TopDown = 0x100000,
     WriteWatch = 0x200000,
     LargePages = 0x20000000
}

[Flags]
public enum MemoryProtection
{
     Execute = 0x10,
     ExecuteRead = 0x20,
     ExecuteReadWrite = 0x40,
     ExecuteWriteCopy = 0x80,
     NoAccess = 0x01,
     ReadOnly = 0x02,
     ReadWrite = 0x04,
     WriteCopy = 0x08,
     GuardModifierflag = 0x100,
     NoCacheModifierflag = 0x200,
     WriteCombineModifierflag = 0x400
}

Notes:

None.

Tips & Tricks:

You can get the dwSize in C# with sizeof(TYPE) for blittable types or Marshal.SizeOf(typeof(TYPE)) for non-blittable types

Sample Code:

        IntPtr allocatedBaseAddress = VirtualAllocEx(process.Handle, IntPtr.Zero, buffer.Length, AllocationType.Commit | AllocationType.Reserve, MemoryProtection.ExecuteReadWrite);

Alternative Managed API:

The ManagedWindowsApi project (http://mwinapi.sourceforge.net) provides a ProcessMemoryChunk class to allocate and access memory of a different process.

Documentation

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