List of well-known GUIDs [closed]

Question

Probably, many thousands of new GUIDs are generated every second worldwide. Some of them might be in use only for a second and then sink into oblivion forever. Others could be more lucky and last for a longer time but are confined to a single database or computer system, and are not of a general interest.

And only a small portion of GUIDs are elite, born to have a worldwide fame and possibly live forever. Sometimes they are called well-known GUIDs. Of course, this notion is imprecise and somewhat subjective. Sometimes, knowledge of a certain well-know GUID can give you power or open doors to access certain APIs.

One example is a so-called "God Mode" GUID in Windows ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C.

Another one is DF8395B5-A4BA-450b-A77C-A9A47762C520 that is only mentioned on couple of paged on the Web, but is very useful if you want to invoke some CLR debugging or profiling APIs from a managed code.

Some of them (like 53D29EF7-377C-4D14-864B-EB3A85769359) are identifiers of system devices that could be useful when searching for missing drivers.

I am curious to know if there is a published list, or some community-supported database including some (hopefully, most) well-known GUIDs with their description, kind (e.g. COM CLSID, system device ID, ...), publisher, obsolete/deprecated status, and other pertinent information?

Personally, I have a list of a hundred or so GUIDs that proved to be quite useful on several occasions. I also found short lists like this specific to certain narrow areas.

Answer 1

Well, maybe its not aggregated over Google, but we could do it here.

1. There are Known Folder GUIDs for File Dialog Custom Places. You use a GUID to specify a Windows Vista Known Folder when you add folders to a CustomPlaces collection. Known Folder GUIDs are not case sensitive and are defined in the KnownFolders.h file in the Windows SDK.: List of Known Folder GUIDs
2. Virtual folder GUIDs : List of Virtual Folder GUIDs
3. VSS Write GUIDS here: List of well known VSS Writer GUIDs
4. Well Known Object GUIDs: List of Well Known Object GUIDs
5. List of well known Project GUIDs: http://www.mztools.com/articles/2008/mz2008017.aspx

Interestingly this website seems to be a Master List of Well Known GUID's although they seem related to Microsoft GUIDs, some lead to MSDN, some elsewhere.

Answer 2

Many links found in the question and also in answers are now dead.

I also needed all this for many years! At last, I've had some time to spare, so I've created this free site http://www.magnumdb.com/ that is a search engine/database that contains many constants, values, their names and in what Windows SDK file they are defined.

For example, this search http://www.magnumdb.com/search?q=%2253D29EF7-377C-4D14-864B-EB3A85769359%22 will tell you this value 53D29EF7-377C-4D14-864B-EB3A85769359 is in fact GUID_DEVCLASS_BIOMETRIC defined in %ProgramFiles(x86)%\Windows Kits\10\Include\10.0.15063.0\shared\devguid.h