Win32 processes can safely use the standard C library functions (malloc, free, and so on) to manipulate memory. When used with previous versions of Windows, these functions had potential problems that no longer apply to applications using the Win32 API. For example, malloc allocates a fixed pointer that does not take advantage of movable memory. Memory management is no longer a problem because the system is free to manage memory by moving pages of physical memory without affecting the virtual addresses. Similarly, the distinction between near and far pointers is no longer relevant. So, unless you want to allocate discardable memory, it is now reasonable to use the standard C library functions for memory management.