xxxxxx exe is not a valid Win32 application

Question

I have small C C   project in Visual Studio 2012 RC  This applications parses the argv and then calling another  exe file with ShellExecute  My application works perfect on Windows7 but on Windows XP x86 trhows Is not a valid Win32 application error   I have compiled it with Mutli-thread  MT  and Win32 Platform  This is my  includes   include  lt string gt   include  lt iostream gt   include  lt Windows h gt   include  lt fstream gt   include  lt cstdio gt   include  lt vector gt   include  lt windowsx h gt   include  lt shlobj h gt   include  lt stdio h gt   include  lt tchar h gt   include  lt direct h gt    Thanks

User · Accepted Answer

VS 2012 applications cannot be run under Windows XP   See this VC   blog on why and how to make it work   It seems to be supported possible from Feb 2013  See noelicus answer below on how to

User · Answer

I had the same issue on Windows XP when running an application built with a static version of Qt 5 7 0  MSVC 2013     Adding the following line to the project s  pro file solved it   QMAKE LFLAGS WINDOWS    SUBSYSTEM WINDOWS 5 01

User · Answer

While seleted answer was right time ago  and then noelicus gave correct update regarding v110 xp platform toolset  there is still one more issue that could produse this behaviour   A note about issue was already posted by mahesh in his comment  and I would like to highlight this as I have spend couple of days struggling and then find it by myself   So  if you have a blank in  Configuration Properties -  Linker -  System -  Subsystem  you will still get the  not valid Win32 app  error on XP and Win2003 while on Win7 it works without this annoying error  The error gone as soon as I ve put subsystem console

User · Answer

I believe this error can also be thrown if your project is targeting a framework version that is not installed on the server you are deploying to

User · Answer

For me  this helped  1  Configuration properties General Platform Toolset   Windows XP  V110 xp  2  C C   Preprocessor definitions  add  WIN32  3  Linker System Minimum required version   5 01

User · Answer

There are at least two solutions    You need Visual Studio 2010 installed  then from Visual Studio 2010  View -  Solution Explorer -  Right Click on your project -  Choose Properties from the context menu  you ll get the windows  your project name  Property Pages  -  Configuration Properties -  General -  Platform toolset  choose  Visual Studio 2010  v100    You need the Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 described in Windows XP Targeting with C   in Visual Studio 2012

User · Answer

It s Feb 2013  and I can now target XP in VS2012 by setting   Project Properties -  General -  Platform Toolset to   Visual Studio 2012 - Windows XP  v110 xp   You will have to redistribute the msvcp110 dll libraries et al with your application  which are found here    lt Program Files gt  Microsoft Visual Studio 11 0 VC redist x86 Microsoft VC110 CRT      Update Aug 2015 with Visual Studio 2015  There seems to be quite a selection now  I was able to compile application in VS2015 using Visual Studio 2015 - Windows XP  v140 xp  setting  To make it actually run on Win XP I had to deploy  copy alongside application  msvcr100 dll for Release build and msvcr110 dll and msvcr100d dll for Debug build  note there is a difference in numbers 100 and 110  also debug lib msvcr100d dll may not be redistributable

User · Answer

I got this problem while launching a VS2013 32-bit console application in powershell  launching it in cmd did not issue this problem

[c++] xxxxxx.exe is not a valid Win32 application

Examples related to c++

Examples related to c

Examples related to windows

Examples related to visual-studio-2012