getting function arguments of an API function

hello all,

A newbie here wondering if there is anyone out there who has some knowledge about assembly language, or translations of it.

I am trying to explore a mid-sized DLL from the system32 folder and I'd like to see the functions that are in there, and how they could be used. I have downloaded a simple DLL viewer that shows me function names found in DLLs, but what I can't seem to get are the details about the functions.

What I'm specifically looking for are the number of arguments and the data types that those arguments accept. I have tried a slew of technologies to try and find out but they've all failed me. I've tried:

*OllyDbg
*Windows SDK 'dumpbin'
*IDA Pro
*Google
*Forums

I even tried searching to see whether there was an 'assembly to C' translater available, but it's almost impossible to find. The ones I did see I was not impressed with, as far as giving me what I'm looking for.

I guess my general question to you gurus here is: How did the popular API functions that are used in VBA nowadays get documented? Someone obviously had to find out the details of those functions' argument in order to publish the correct information. An example would be the "getUserNameA" function to get the login name of the computer user. The closest I've come to getting at this is the OllyDbg program, which you can use to call a DLL function. It also shows you what the arguments are, and how many of them are required. The bad thing about that though, is that there's not an option to export that list from the dialog window that shows you the args and list of functions.

Is there anyone out there that would have some advice for me? Right now, my skill level is at the point where I can read linear instructions from a piped DOS output and understand the hex numbers on each line, but I don't think that's even relevant to the information I want to get at.

Thanks for any assistance guys!

Nov 8 '10 #1

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