VC2003 & Last PSDK for Legacy Platforms

[Charles E Hardwidge]

I feel a bit dumb for asking this but I lost my documentation in an
accident. Could someone confirm the last supported PSDK for VC2003 and
95/98/ME & NT4?

 

[David Wilkinson]

I feel a bit dumb for asking this but I lost my documentation in an
accident. Could someone confirm the last supported PSDK for VC2003 and
95/98/ME & NT4?

Charles:

1. To my knowledge, the PSDK is still backward compatible to older OS's. By
setting WINVER etc. you can eliminate features available only on later OS's.

2. Also to my knowledge, there are no limitations on the version of the PSDK
that can be used with VS2003 (VC7.1).

3. The last version of VC to officially support Windows 95 was VC6. The latest
PSDK usable with VC6 was February 2003.

 

[Charles E Hardwidge]

1. To my knowledge, the PSDK is still backward compatible to older OS's.
By setting WINVER etc. you can eliminate features available only on later
OS's.

2. Also to my knowledge, there are no limitations on the version of the
PSDK that can be used with VS2003 (VC7.1).

3. The last version of VC to officially support Windows 95 was VC6. The
latest PSDK usable with VC6 was February 2003.

Thanks Dave.

Things are looking that way but VC++2003 is internally documented as
supporting 95 and NT4, and I have a recollection that Microsoft commented
that a later PSDK was the last to officially support older targets.

I guess, it's one of those funny things where you get a different answer
depending on who you ask. It's just annoying me that my replacement
compatibility spreadsheet has question marks all over the place.

Does anyone have a clue what PSDK was the last Microsoft officially
recommended for VC++2003? That would fill a hole in the spreadsheet and shut
me up.

 

[Jim Barry]

3. The last version of VC to officially support Windows 95 was VC6.

I don't think that's right. It was possible to target Win95 up until VC2005 when the CRT introduced a dependency on IsDebuggerPresent, which only exists from Win98.

The latest PSDK usable with VC6 was February 2003.

Yes, the XP/SP2 SDK libs were compiled with /GS (buffer security check) making them incompatible with VC6.

 

[Jim Barry]

Does anyone have a clue what PSDK was the last Microsoft officially
recommended for VC++2003? That would fill a hole in the spreadsheet
and shut me up.

As David said, there is no such limitation. I guess you could say the last PSDK that works with VC2003 is the Windows Server 2003 SP1 Platform SDK, because that was the last to be called "Platform SDK". Its name has changed to Windows SDK (for Vista) - but it should still work with VC2003.

 

[David Wilkinson]

I don't think that's right. It was possible to target Win95 up until VC2005 when the CRT introduced

a dependency on IsDebuggerPresent, which only exists from Win98.

Jim:

It seems that you are right. There were problems with Windows 95 targets on
VS2002, but these were fixed in VS2003. See, for example:

<http://groups.google.com/group/micr...read/thread/8d796d13e098d336/fee4f8e8b4a25e04>

However, I think that, in general, the withdrawing of support for earlier OS's
in successive Visual Studio releases is a major impediment to upgrading. It is
certainly one of the excuses I used for sticking with VC6 for a long time.

If the PSDK can be backward compatible (with appropriate WINVER etc.) why cannot
Visual Studio be likewise?

 

[Jim Barry]

However, I think that, in general, the withdrawing of support for
earlier OS's in successive Visual Studio releases is a major
impediment to upgrading. It is certainly one of the excuses I used
for sticking with VC6 for a long time.

If the PSDK can be backward compatible (with appropriate WINVER etc.)
why cannot Visual Studio be likewise?

I agree with the sentiment, though I cannot see any reason to target Windows 95 these days. In fact I would personally find it very hard to justify supporting Windows 98/Me/NT4 either.

It does seem a little odd that apparently the only thing stopping VS2005-compiled images running on Win95 is the missing IsDebuggerPresent export in kernel32.dll. There may be other technical reasons why Win95 is not supported, of course, but I dare say the actual reason is non-technical (think testing).

 

[Charles E Hardwidge]

I agree with the sentiment, though I cannot see any reason to target
Windows 95 these days. In fact I would personally find it very hard to
justify supporting Windows 98/Me/NT4 either.

It does seem a little odd that apparently the only thing stopping
VS2005-compiled images running on Win95 is the missing IsDebuggerPresent
export in kernel32.dll. There may be other technical reasons why Win95 is
not supported, of course, but I dare say the actual reason is
non-technical (think testing).

As you comment, there's some issues with VC2005 but it starts getting really
hairy with VC2008. I found one blog topic someone had written up on the
issues and it gets really involved. I don't have a link to that but some of
you folks may be interested in looking at legacy extender.

http://www.legacyextender.com/

 

[Charles E Hardwidge]

As David said, there is no such limitation. I guess you could say the last
PSDK that works with VC2003 is the Windows Server 2003 SP1 Platform SDK,
because that was the last to be called "Platform SDK". Its name has
changed to Windows SDK (for Vista) - but it should still work with VC2003.

If I read things properly, the Windows Server 2003 R2 (Mar 2006) is the last
one tested against VC2003. The Windows SDK (Feb 2007) is the last for
VC2005, and Windows SDK (Feb 2008) is the latest for VC2005 SP1.

The last Windows 2000 SP4 SDK was Windows Server R2. I think, 98/NT was R2
as well but am not sure. I did have it documented but as I said at the top,
I lost that when I had an archive accident.

 

[Jim Barry]

If I read things properly, the Windows Server 2003 R2 (Mar 2006) is
the last one tested against VC2003.

Oops, yes - R2 is what I meant, not SP1

The last Windows 2000 SP4 SDK was Windows Server R2. I think, 98/NT
was R2 as well but am not sure.

Not quite sure what you mean by that. In general you can go back as far as you want by defining WINVER etc to the appropriate value.

 

[Jim Barry]

As you comment, there's some issues with VC2005 but it starts getting
really hairy with VC2008. I found one blog topic someone had written
up on the issues and it gets really involved. I don't have a link to
that but some of you folks may be interested in looking at legacy
extender.

Interesting!

 

[Charles E Hardwidge]

Oops, yes - R2 is what I meant, not SP1


Not quite sure what you mean by that. In general you can go back as far as
you want by defining WINVER etc to the appropriate value.

There's compiler support and OS support. Later SDK's can work but may not be
tested against older build environments or targets.