I have recently acquired source code from a VS2005 project that uses the MFC library. Firstly I upgraded the project to VS2012 and I can now successfully build and run the software on Windows 8. Next, I wanted to deploy the software on a Windows XP machine.
I have set the Platform Toolset to build to Windows XP (using the v110_xp option) and I have installed the 'Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2012 Update 1' on the target machine. When I run the software, nothing appears to happen. Via some logging functions I can determine that a call to LoadFrame(IDR_MAINFRAME) causes an exception in kernel32.dll. I can't debug any further in to LoadFrame as remote debugging on Windows XP is not available in VS2012.
Any ideas what may be going wrong? Is the Visual C++ Redistributable package the correct version to be installing on the target machine? What should I be trying next?
UPDATE
My project is already set up to use the 7.1 SDK and has minimum required version set to 5.01 in linker options.
If I use InstallShield to generate an installer and include the MFC, CRT and ATL redistributables, the installer works and my program now runs on Windows XP. My understanding of the redistributables is that they simply copy the relevant dll's in to the system32 folder (or equivalent)? Is that correct?
However, if I simply copy the files over, run the vsredist_x86.exe or use Inno Setup to install the software & dll's, my program no longer works.
I believe you have read this blog. In summary, you need to use the 7.1 SDK, and you need to set minimum required version to 5.01 in linker options.
Using the working InstallShield project and the not-working Inno project I was able to determine that the real culprit here was an unregistered msxml4.dll. The error I was receiving gave no real clue to this outcome but I got there eventually...
regsvr32 msxml4.dll
Related
I have a c++ program built using VS2017 on windows7.
When I run it on Windows7 or windows10 there is no problem.
If I Build the same program on Windows10 (still using VS2017) the program runs OK on Windows10 but when I try to run it on Windows7 I get an "0xC000001D: Illegal Instruction." error.
Is it even possible to run programs built in Windows10 on Windows7 ? and if so what can I do?
Thanks
The default SDKs will be different on your two VS2017 installations. Right-click the project, select "properties", then the "General" page. See Windows SDK Version.
You can install different SDK versions (and different Platform Toolsets) using the Visual Studio installer ("Modify").
You would probably need to install the v140 toolset.
Also see the response here:
https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/e19634d8-f635-4ed0-b8d7-45b64ccbd6fa/windows-sdk-7-in-visual-studio-2017?forum=visualstudiogeneral
...which states:
You can create a project with the default project template. After that, right click the project name under Solution Explorer and go to Configuration Properties-General, modify the 'Platform Toolset' to Windows7.1SDK, since you already installed the Windows SDK 7. Please have a look at the following note:
##To change the target platform toolset, you must have the associated version of Visual Studio or the Windows Platform SDK installed. For example, to target the Itanium platform with the Windows7.1SDK platform toolset, you must have Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4 SP1 installed
If the above not works, you can also modify the platform toolset to Visual Studio 2010 (v100), which has the same compiler like Windows SDK 7, if you have the VS 2010 and VS 2017 on the same computer
I have an application written in C++ that uses socket (Winsock2.h). It has been developed on Windows 10 and it builds and runs fine on Windows 10. There is an old XP machine on which that application has to run (the machine cannot be upgraded as it contains legacy code that does not run on newer systems), but when I try to run the application on it I get the error: "The procedure entry point WSAPoll could not be located in the dynamic link library WS2_32.dll".
I tried the following:
I downloaded Visual Studio Express 2010 on a XP box and tried to build the application on it:
The code does not compile, because it uses libpqxx library (I suspect that libpqxx uses some c++11 code, that is not fully supported by VS2010);
I downloaded the XP toolset (v141_xp) for Visual Studio 2017 and built the application on Windows 10 (I have also downloaded and installed on XP the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2017);
I got the same "The procedure entry point WSAPoll could not be located in the dynamic link library WS2_32.dll" error.
I tried to use winsock.h and link the application to wsock32.lib:
I got the same entry point error on WS2_32.lib (probably VS links the application to WS2_32.lib even if I specified to use wsock32.liB).
Is there a way to build on VS2017 using the xp toolset an application that uses Ws2_32.lib targeting XP?
EDIT 2019-05-03 10:30
As noticed by cprogrammer and Remy Lebeau WSAPoll does not exist in XP. The point is that I do not use WSAPoll in my code. So I followed the suggestion of Retired Ninja and I wrote from scratch an application using WinSock2 starting from the very basic and adding functions step by step(*). Well, all of my code worked well. The point is that I included also another library - libpqxx - and probably it uses WSAPoll.
Ok, I still have a problem, but at least I know where it is
(*) By the way, I already tried the same in the part of my code that uses WS2_32.lib, but as the problem was in another library I still got the error, so the suggestion to start from scratch really helped.
Accortding to docs, for WSAPoll, the minimum supported client is Windows 8.1, Windows Vista [desktop apps | UWP apps]
Cannot be used for applications targeting Windows XP.
Your app (or one of its dependancies) is static linking to WSAPoll(), which simply does not exist on XP, it was introduced in Vista. Whatever code your app uses that utilizes WSAPoll() will have to be rewritten for XP. For instance, by using GetProcAddress() to access WSAPoll() dynamically instead of statically, and using a fallback (select(), WSAAsyncSelect(), WSAEventSelect(), etc) when WSAPoll() is not available.
Actually, the code should be rewritten - period, since WSAPoll() is broken and even Microsoft has gone on record saying that WSAPoll() will not be fixed and should not be used.
I have written a portable program in C# with certain dependencies (.NET Framework, Visual C++ redistributable, etc) that will run on Windows XP SP3 and up.
Because of that, the program needs a launcher that will run every time before the actual program does, checking that all the required dependencies are installed. If any of the dependencies are missing, an option to download and install that dependency, will be offered. If there are no missing dependencies, then the actual program is executed.
The launcher itself is relatively simple, consisting of some registry checkup and some WinAPI calls to verify the installed dependencies.
The file structure in the end will look something like this:
C#_compiled_portable_program.exe
C++_compiled_launcher.exe // executes on any system as low as a clean Windows XP SP3 install
The problem is that I have no idea how to compile a C++ code in Visual Studio 2013 that will run with absolute bare minimum dependencies (running on the runtime libraries that come with Windows XP SP3, at least).
Take for instance the absolute simplest C++ code:
#include "stdafx.h"
int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
{
printf("Hello world!");
return 0;
}
If I compile this with Visual Studio 2013 with the default configurations, it will not execute on a machine that doesn't have VC++ 2013 installed, showing some nasty errors.
I looked around for similar questions and the closest I could find was
Visual Studio 2010 MSVCR dependency removal?, but the answers are either incomplete or outdated.
So, just like an installer, is it possible to compile a C++ project in Visual Studio 2013 that will run pretty much on any system?
This is not perfect, but will do for now.
This is what I did to make a C++ project, compiled in Visual Studio 2013, execute ona system that doesn't have VC++ 2013 installed.
I created a new C++ project in Visual Studio 2013, File>New>Project>Visual C++>Win32 Console Application
Then in Solution Explorer right click the project and select Properties.
Click the Configuration drop down menu and select All Configurations.
In Configuration Properties>General, set Platform Toolset to Visual Studio 2013 - Windows XP (v120_xp).
With Dependency Walker determine what modules are imported by the compiled exe (the release build, not the debug one). The imported modules should be:
c:\windows\system32\KERNEL32.DLL
c:\windows\system32\MSVCR120.DLL
KERNEL32.DLL is a system file so we don't have to worry about that, and MSVCR120.DLL is the Visual C++ 2013 Runtime Library and we need to distribute this file along with the release build. When the executable needs to load a module, it first looks at its current location for that file and then in PATH (System32, etc). If we copy MSVCR120.DLL at same location the release executable is, then the program will run even on systems without VC++ 2013 installed.
Since the project is a 32-bit application, download VC++ 2013 Redistributable x86, install it on a 32-bit version of Windows (I installed it on a fresh Windows XP virtual machine), and copy c:\windows\system32\MSVCR120.DLL.
Update:
Never mind. You don't have to distribute a copy of VC++ Runtime DLL file, you can just configure the project to link statically to the runtime library.
Here is explained how to do it. You'll still have to change the Platform Toolset though, if you plan on executing on Windows XP.
I installed VS 2012 Professional and the XP update as well. I built my project with v110_xp as the platform toolset on VS 2012. My project's .msi package is installing fine on Win 7 but failing on Win XP SP3. The error reported on XP SP3 is -
"The procedure entry point FlushProcessWriteBuffers could not be
located in the dynamic link library Kernel32.dll".
While the same project built from VS 2005 is installing fine on XP SP3. I am not sure what is going on VS 2012. _WIN32_WINNT is set to 0x0501. Can some one please guide as how to resolve the problem ?
Any help is highly appreciated,
Mahesh.
Yes, the C Runtime has a dependency on FlushProcessWriteBuffers(). The updated version of msvcrt110.dll and libcmtl.lib, the ones you got along with the update, no longer directly link to the function, they use GetProcAddress() to find it and limp along if it is missng. So you should never get this error.
So very high odds that you deployed the wrong version of msvcrt110.dll, an old one instead of the updated one. You can find it back in c:\windows\system32, look at the properties. Mine is version 11.00.51106.1, dated 11/5/2012. A separate installer is available for it here.
The VS2012 runtime that you are installing uses functions that are not present available in XP. See this MS article: Targeting Windows XP with C++ in Visual Studio 2012 which explains more and provides some workarounds.
Update 1 for VS2012 resolve the problem.
But Update 1 isn’t just about new Windows platforms. It also enables you to target Windows XP with native C++ applications in Visual Studio 2012.
If you are building with update 1 and still encountering problems then I suspect that you are installing an out of date runtime. You need to deploy the runtime delivered with update 1.
You can solve this by including the VC11 merge modules from your development machine(program files\common files\merge modules) in your installer. It's easier than having to run the redist exe in your installer.
If you use WIX: merge module addition
I've tested on server 03, xp64 and xp32.
I have a C++ program. It's quite simple - shows an image (splash screen) and launches another application, then closes when that other application is started. Actually, this one: http://www.olsonsoft.com/blogs/stefanolson/post/A-better-WPF-splash-screen.aspx with very minor changes (my splash screen image and my program is launched instead of the sample one).
It works good on my Windows 7 developer machine. Also it works on another (virtual) machine with Windows XP SP2 and Visual Studio 2008 installed. But it doesn't work on just the same virtual Windows XP SP2 machine without Visual Studio. It shows an error: "Entry point memmove_s could not be located in the dynamic link library msvcrt.dll".
I have found that a problem possible is in WindowsCodec DLL (no such DLL in clear XP SP2 installation, but it is in Windows/system32 folder of XP SP2 with Visual Studio) so I copied it to the application folder on the clear system. After that the program partially works (launches another application after start) but didn't show the splash screen image.
Installation of Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Package (both 2008 and 2010) didn't help.
I've found a recommendation to use static linking in Visual Studio (Multi Threaded (/MT) option in project properties -> C/C++ -> Code Generation), but it also didn't help.
Also I have tried DependencyWalker but cannot find any differences in dependencies for both test systems.
Anyone have any ideas why this could happen? I'm completely new in C++, hope this is something obvious that I just don't know...
Your program has a dependency on the .NET framework, at least version 3.0. That is not available on an XP SP2 install by default. If you don't see windowscodecs.dll then you didn't install the proper version of .NET. This does work when you install VS2008 because it also installs .NET.
The download is here.
C++ programs become dependent the specific versions of the crt library that it was compiled on. If the running system does not have that version in the either the local program directory, or the systems WinSxS directory. This is a specific issue with C++ progams compiled using VS 2005 or 2008. See here for more information : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side-by-side_assembly
You might see this problem go away if you use VS 2010, as it uses a different method for dependency resolution.