The only windows programming I do is with C#. I've never used C++ for windows specific applications. Using Visual Studio and C#, you specify the dll in the project properties references. After that, you can use a 'using' directive to specify the class. From that point, you should be able to freely use the code in the dll -- well, that's how it works in C#. I would venture to say that this is the way it works for C++ .NET. However, since you're not using .NET, it could be different.