I need to target Windows XP OS for a manufacturing company. I usually use VS2003 C++ and MFC for this older OS but I prefer to use VS2010 for all my Windows’ Apps if possible and I did solve two initial problems with VS2010.

With the new project wizard I generated a simple (unmanaged, no MFC, no forms) C++ “Hello World” Win32 Project. I did not want Unicode so I edited the Project properties-dialog-box by changing Character Set from Unicode to Multi-byte. Problem#2 was error messages that dev DLL's not found. This problem was solved by changing the Code Generation – Runtime Libraries from Multi-threaded DLL to just Multi-threaded (no need to distribute dev DLL’s with a small program).

My first attempt to target Windows XP with VS2010 was by tying to edit targetver.h (this header was created by the wizard):
I tried adding
#define _WIN32_WINNT _WIN32_WINNT_WINXP however I still got the same Kernal32 DLL runtime error message on a native XP PC.

Just as a test, I used the older VS2003 to create an unmanaged C++ simple “Hello World” executable (created on the same PC I have VS2010 installed), it ran perfectly on Windows 7, Vista and ran perfectly on the XP PC also – by using VS2003 instead of VS2010.

I will be grateful if someone could answer the question below, and if yes give me some suggestions on how I might get my simple unmanaged C++ “Hello World” program to run on XP OS that was generated by VS2010:

Can VS2010 Professional Full Version, create a Windows XP executable???