I'm trying to get access to the windows standard images, and icons like
the question mark, exclamation point etc. How do I get them or am I
stuck using the characters from the keyboard. I want to put the images
on buttons, etc.
It depends on exactly what images you're trying to get. Worse comes to
worse, you could just take a screenshot when the images you want are being
displayed, and then copy them in any image editing program. Visual Studio
does include a library of images that you can use in your applications;
you have to make sure you've selected that during setup, so that it will
be copied to your hard drive.
Note that any approach in which you embed images from Windows in your own
application will suffer from the "outdated look" problem when Windows
itself changes. If you want graphics in your UI, it may be a better
choice to just use custom graphics rather than trying to match some
specific Windows appearance.
Pete