   Releasing a resource
  Is there any way to release custom resources at will? You can load any type of resource with LoadResource(), but there are some specific functions to use when dealing with certain types of resources. There''s specific memory releasing functions for menus, icons, cursors, accelerator tables, and bitmaps. But what do you use when you''ve loaded a resource like a wave or something?   I don''t have a signature 
  If I remember my Windows API history correctly, the entire three stage FindResource()/LoadResource()/LockResource() thing is a historical oddity due to the fact that resources were not necessarily loaded into memory along with the executable image that they were attached to. This meant that in order to use a resource, memory had to be allocated for it, hence the HGLOBAL handle returned by LoadResource(). With the switch to the 32 bit version of the Windows API, all resources were loaded at the same time as the executable they were attached to, which eliminated the need to separately allocate memory for the resource, which also eliminated (technically) the need to lock or free the resource''s memory. Basically none of these calls require a call to explicitly free the resource any longer, as they''re implicitly freed when the executable image is unloaded.With LoadBitmap(), LoadIcon() and the like, the appropriate destroy call is needed because these functions allocate things like GDI handles and resources that need to be freed in addition to the underlying memory. 