Patching GetSystemTimePreciseAsFileTime onto Windows 7 is a technical workaround, not a perfect solution. It demonstrates the ingenuity of the retro-computing and binary patching communities but comes with trade-offs in precision and reliability. For production systems requiring high-fidelity timestamps, upgrading to Windows 8 or later—or using GetSystemTimePreciseAsFileTime ’s predecessor GetSystemTimeAsFileTime with a separate performance counter—remains the safer, supported path.
class PreciseTime using Fn = VOID (WINAPI *)(LPFILETIME); Fn fn = nullptr; public: PreciseTime() HMODULE k = GetModuleHandleW(L"kernel32.dll"); if (k) fn = (Fn)GetProcAddress(k, "GetSystemTimePreciseAsFileTime"); getsystemtimepreciseasfiletime windows 7 patched
Microsoft no longer supports Windows 7 (EOL January 2020). However, some enterprises pay for ESU (Extended Security Updates). A patched DLL could break after a security update. Fn fn = nullptr