diff --git a/src/shims/windows/foreign_items.rs b/src/shims/windows/foreign_items.rs
index 2278988da3..35fced66f0 100644
--- a/src/shims/windows/foreign_items.rs
+++ b/src/shims/windows/foreign_items.rs
@@ -523,7 +523,7 @@ pub trait EvalContextExt<'tcx>: crate::MiriInterpCxExt<'tcx> {
                 let [handle, name_ptr] = this.check_shim(abi, sys_conv, link_name, args)?;
 
                 let handle = this.read_scalar(handle)?;
-                let name_ptr = this.deref_pointer_as(name_ptr, this.libc_ty_layout("wchar_t"))?; // the pointer where we should store the ptr to the name
+                let name_ptr = this.deref_pointer(name_ptr)?; // the pointer where we should store the ptr to the name
 
                 let thread = match Handle::try_from_scalar(handle, this)? {
                     Ok(Handle::Thread(thread)) => Ok(thread),