SDK developers prefer to define their own types using typedef. This allows changing underlying types only in one place, without changing all client code. It is important to follow this convention. DWORD is unlikely to be changed, but types like DWORD_PTR are different on different platforms, like Win32 and x64. So, if some function has DWORD parameter, use DWORD and not unsigned int, and your code will be compiled in all future windows headers versions.