Is it really necessary to use Windows Vista or higher to develop for Microsoft Surface? - pixelsense

I tried to start developing for Microsoft Surface. For that I first installed Visual Studio 2008. Then I followed this guide:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee804897.aspx
However there it says that only Windows Vista is supported. I'm still running Windows XP on my laptop and old PC and I don't want to update if not absolutely necessary. So I wonder if it is really necessary to use Windows Vista or if it is just a recommendation.
I already tried to install it on Windows XP, but every time i start the Surace SDK installer, the following error message appears:
This installation package cannot be
installed by the Windows Installer
service. You must install a Windows
service pack that contains a newer
version of the Windows Installer
service.
So I was wondering if this is the problem because I don't use Windows Vista. And if not, how can I solve this problem?

Yep, probably.
You can try installing the latest version of Windows installer.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942288

Windows vista is definitely required. I can't tell you if this is an artificially imposed requirement, or a physical incompatibility, but vista has been a requirement to install the SDK since was first released to Microsoft partners.

surface has a number of hard Vista dependencies. DWM is the most obvious one

Related

How to automatically uninstall DirectX 9?

I am putting together a WiX installer that includes silently installing DirectX 9:
dxsetup.exe /silent
How do I tell WiX how to un-install DirectX? Is there another switch on the command line?
I need to be able to configure the installer to un-install DirectX automatically, else users complain if they can't uninstall.
For the DirectX End-User Runtime (aka DirectSetup or DXSETUP), it has long been recommended that you don't even try to uninstall it.
In any case, on most versions of Windows you can't 'uninstall' DirectX and running DXSETUP doesn't actually "Install DirectX" either as it's built into the OS. It can only be updated by installing a new version of the OS, installing a Service Pack, or applying a Windows Update. This applies to all versions of Windows starting with Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, and Windows XP x64 Edition.
DXSETUP is still useful for deploying stuff like legacy D3DX9, D3DX10, D3DX11, XACTEngine, XAudio 2.7, XInput 1.3, D3DCompile #43 or earlier, etc. It just doesn't ever install "DirectX".
See No So Direct Setup. If after reading this article you still think you need to run DXSETUP as part of your deployment, you should pick up the latest version of DXSETUP to avoid some potential issues, and trim it down to just those CABs you actually use in your application.

VB program does not run on older XP machine

First off, I do most my programming as tools for myself and know just enough to get by. I wrote a VB program which uses a vender's API DLL to communicate with a serial port device. I used VS Express. Works great on my Win 7 32-bit machine.
I handed my program off to a co-worker (didn't expect to share my tools) who has a XP 32-bit machine. I get a windows error that it "is not a valid win32 application" I made sure to include the vender's DLL with my executable.
I really don't want to have to install VS Express on his computer as that is how I have solved the issue in the past. I could use some pointers on cross-platform compatibility. Not looking to make my software universal, just to get it running on a XP machine.
Thank you,
Xp only supports up to .NET framework 2.0 if you want to use it on all versions of xp.
So you need to check with version he has or you want to support.
So if you want it to run on Xp "All versions" you need to make it .NET framework 2.0
Is .NET 4.0 Compatible with Windows XP SP2 or below?

wix burn installer requirements

I was looking for some documentation which will explain what requirements of my installer will be if I made it with wix and burn...
I`m still not sure about that because that information is hard to get...
When I was looking for an answer i found dependency of VC++redist... so it is telling me if I wrote custom action in c++ I need to have these on my target machine?
Also If I want to have my own UI, using burn... automatically I need .net framework 3.5?
I want to write installer, with custom actions and custom UI, I don`t mind which language use to write custom action (c++ or c#) but I want to be able to use my installation on winxp...
So if anybody have some info about requirements of installers... I did just couple of simple installers... all of them are running on win7 all right... but what about winxp? Thanks
Note that WiX is not an installation environment of its own. To put it simply, it is a comfortable, XML-style way to describe your installation requirements that gets translated into Windows Installer .msi databases by its compiler and linker. In this respect, WiX is a relatively thin wrapper around Windows Installer technology, and while it does provide extra features to help the setup developers, its abilities are dictated by the underlying technology and its limitations are not of its own but the limitations of Windows Installer itself.
System Requirements from Windows Installer 3.1 shows this:
Supported Operating System
Windows 2000 Service Pack 3, Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows XP Service Pack 1, Windows XP Service Pack 2
Windows Installer 3.1 Redistributable supports Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3 or later, Windows XP, Windows XP Service Pack 1, Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows Server 2003. Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 contains Windows Installer 3.1 and therefore can't be installed or upgraded by this redistributable.
So it should work like a charm on xp machines.
Sources:
WIX Tutorial
MSDN

Installing simplest plugin on German Windows XP

I'm trying to figure out why the simplest firebreath plugin wont install on a German Windows XP SP3. I'm running Windows XP as a virtual machine.
The event viewer in Windows XP tells me something about the Windows Installer aborting but not why. I'm logged in as the administrator.
The installer works on Windows 7.
For development I use Windows 7, Visual Studio 2010 and some one months old firebreath trunk.
Is this is known problem? What are the typical steps I could use to track down the issue?
Regards,
Christian
If you get an error saying module can't be found it means that you are missing a .dll file needed to make the plugin work. The most common if it works on most computers (or many) but not that one is that your .dll was compiled with a dynamic runtime, in which case you'll have to install the common runtime for whatever version of visual studio you compiled it with.
For example, the runtime distributable for vs2008 is at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29
Dependency Walker might help you to find out which dll is missing.

How do I resolve "Run-time error '429': ActiveX component can't create object"?

My company has a VB6 application using Crystal Reports 7 which a client has asked to be installed on Windows 7 32 bit. It is currently installed on Windows XP 32bit SP2 machines at the client. Connection to the DB is done via ODBC to SQL Server 2000 instance on another server.
On Windows 7, the installation works fine, however when you try to open the application, the error is given.
I have looked at the following:
Registering all the dll's and ocx files using regsvr32. Some will not register as they either are registered already or the following message is given "Make sure that "[name].dll" is valid DLL or OCX file and then try again." I read this forum thread regarding this: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/vblanguage/thread/0653f685-4526-45d9-89f3-8c479a6b4c62
Monitored the opening of the application using a ProcessMonitor application to try and spot if there is a missing dll or ocx file - this does not seem to be the case.
Reviewed the application according to this list and nothing seems to be against these guidelines
I've noticed two items in the knowledge base that relate to this
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/281848 - the comdlg32.ocx bundled with the application is version 6.0.81.69 and the one in the system32 folder on the dev machine (WinXP 32 bit) is 6.1.97.82. However if this was the issue then surely it would not work currently?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/184898 - I'm not sure how to confirm that this is the issue
Finally, due to complexities, I am not allowed to make code changes to this application. Even if I was, I'm not a VB6 programmer, just the guy who got the terribly support project! If code changes are required, then I'll have to investigate using WinXP mode.
Update: I get the same error in XP Mode. That's a Win XP with SP3 VM. This runs on a Win XP SP2 VM, is there potentially something in SP3 that would have caused this to occur? Or is it just a fact of it being XP Mode?
I got the same error but I solved by using regsvr32.exe in C:\Windows\SysWOW64.
Because we use x64 system. So if your machine is also x64, the ocx/dll must registered also with regsvr32 x64 version
The file msrdo20.dll is missing from the installation.
According to the Support Statement for Visual Basic 6.0 on Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 this file should be distributed with the application.
I'm not sure why it isn't, but my solution is to place the file somewhere on the machine, and register it using regsvr32 in the command line, eg:
regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\msrdo20.dll
In an ideal world you would package this up with the redistributable.
This download fixed my VB6 EXE and Access 2016 (using ACEDAO.DLL) run-time error 429. Took me 2 long days to get it resolved because there are so many causes of 429.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/download/details.aspx?id=13255
QUOTE from link:
"This download will install a set of components that can be used to facilitate transfer of data between 2010 Microsoft Office System files and non-Microsoft Office applications"
You say it works once you install the VB6 IDE so the problem is likely to be that the components you are trying to use depend on the VB6 runtime being installed.
The VB6 runtime isn't installed on Windows by default.
Installing the IDE is one way to get the runtime. For non-developer machines, a "redistributable" installer package from Microsoft should be used instead.
Here is one VB6 runtime installer from Microsoft. I'm not sure if it will be the right version for your components:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=7b9ba261-7a9c-43e7-9117-f673077ffb3c