Thanks for your help and sorry for not looking carefully at the documentation: I tried the following for a Windows device context: The creation function is: HDC GetDC( HWND) The deletion function is: int ReleaseDC( HWND, HDC ); // Code like in the documentation... typedef shared_ptr<void> handle; handle make_dc( HWND hWnd ) { // The release function takes two arguments, so I tried an adapter functor...unfortunately it does not work handle( GetDC( hWnd ), bind1( ReleaseDC, hWnd ) ); } My problem is to bind the window handle to the custom delete function. My compilter spits aout a lot of error messages here. Can I use boost::bind here or boost::function? BTW: How does shared_ptr call the custom delete function? For a COM object it should call in the D'tor: raw_ptr->Release(); While in my case it should call ( what is the usual way in the C++ standard IIRC ): Release( raw_ptr ); Does the shard_ptr interface figures this out in some clever way and manage this internally? Regards, -Dirk