Accessing IE cache (TIF) in windows service using WinInet APIs returns 12004

Question

Hello Experts,

I am accessing IE cache (contents of Temporary Internet Files folder) from my application which runs as a windows service, using WinInet APIs. API used is "FindFirstUrlCacheEntry". My environment is:

IE version: 9.0.811216421

OS: Windows 7 Professional - Service Pack 1

The access fails with error code 12004. The same code runs on another machine with exactly the same environment and the user having same previlidges. Kindly guide me as to how I can get rid of the error on the machine where my code is not working.

Thanking everybody in advance

Regards.

P.S. I have studied the WinInet documentation in good detail. It says WinInet is not compatible with Windows services. It recommends using WinHTTP. I studied WinHTTP. It says that it will not cater to APIs for "url caching" and recommends using WinInet. Hence, I am using WinInet. I fail to understand the discrepancy in behavior in two identical environments.

Answer 1

Server applications that require HTTP client services should use WinHTTP instead of WinINet.

Hard to tell what went wrong with the ERROR_INTERNET_INTERNAL_ERROR error code.

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Answer 2

Thank you for the reply Mr. Sheng Jiang.

Could you tell me the API to access Temporary Internet Files using WinHTTP?

Regards.

Answer 3

There is NO caching support from winhttp. You are responsible for writing the caching code and choose the cache directory. The directory structure of IE's cache directory is undocumented.

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