I usually hate asking questions but this one has me stumped.
I am creating a small game using C++ and Allegro5 in Visual Studio Professional 2013. I have used the Visual Studio 2013 – Windows XP (v120_xp) platform toolset, and made sure the Visual C++ 2013 redistributable was installed on the target machine.
I am developing using Windows 8.1, the target machine is running Windows XP SP2.
Whenever I attempt to run the program I receive a message stating .exe is not a valid Win32 application.
Even though I am not using anything related to .NET I have made sure that was installed on the target machine as well.
I have also made sure that the program itself is a 32 bit application.
I am really not sure what to try next. I have searched for the past few hours and made sure that anything necessary was installed. I am still rather new at this so it's quite possible I overlooked something simple, but I can't for the likes of me think of what.
you have to set the Platform Toolset configuration from properties (preview)
Set its value to v120_xp and it should work on windows xp.
read the post http://supportxpdotcom.wordpress.com/2013/07/16/xp-targeting-support-in-the-visual-studio-2013-preview/
see the comments http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2013/06/26/visual-studio-2013-preview-now-available.aspx
I've just had the same problem now fixed. You might have forgotten to set SUBSYSTEM:
Go to project properties -> linker -> system and set as appropriate.
Details here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2012/10/08/10357555.aspx?PageIndex=2
Probably the problem is caused by other compiler option: /arch (enable enhanced instructions set). Try to set it to /arch:IA32 (no enhanced instructions).
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20061248/compiled-a-c-program-in-visual-studio-professional-2013-will-not-work-with-wi