How do I target .NET 4.0.3 on XP using Visual Studio 2012? Application fails to run with “not a valid Win32 application”

Question

I have a large application targeting .NET 4.0.3 that needs to run on XP. It builds fine using Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and runs properly on XP.

Building using Visual S

Answer 1

VS2012 Update 1 is supposed to resolve this issue. However, I am not sure what options to use though, is it Toolset under Project Properties->General->Platform Toolset?

Answer 2

I'm not certain this will work, but try the trick shown here to manually set the subsystem version with EditBin.exe.

Answer 3

It's possible to set the target system requirements under the Project Properties -> Publish -> Prerequisites panel (VS2012 with Update 1). Even though you're building for .NET 4 (Project Properties -> Application -> Target Framework) you'll need to change the prerequisites from 4.5 to 4 as it wont drop the requirements automatically.

Building with a target of 4 but prereq of 4.5 will start the installer but fail on system checks

Answer 4

We are also having this problem. It isn't a matter of what framework your application is targeting (we are targetting the 4.0 client).

The problem is that Visual Studio 2012 will not produce a click once setup.exe that will run on XP. The error is missleading as it always reports that the program is not a valid Win32 application. It does this on any version of XP including 64-bit versions.

It is not your application causing the problem, it is the setup.exe produced by VS2012. The only way we have found to get around it is to publish using VS2010.

Answer 5

Microsoft just recently posted a fix for this. (Express versions included.)

Details at: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/smondal/archive/2012/10/15/setup-exe-is-not-a-valid-win32-application.aspx

Answer 6

This worked for me - just build your solution in Studio 2012, and take a copy of the contents of the solution from the Debug folder. Make sure XP client has .net 4 installed.