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 ap

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

There are at least two solutions:

1. 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)".
2. You need the Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 described in Windows XP Targeting with C++ in Visual Studio 2012

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

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

Answer 6

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